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HISTORY I* ^^'mf ^; 

OF THE LATER xltA, .Cv 



ROMAN COMMONWEALTH, 



FROM THE END OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR TO THE 
DEATH OF JULIUS CiESAR ; 



THE REIGN OE AUGUSTUS 



LIFE OF TRAJAN. 



THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., 

LATE REGIUS PEOPaSSOR OP MODERN BISTORT IN THE TJNIVEBSITT OP OSPOED, 
AND HEAD MASTER OP RUGBY SCHOOL. 



TWO VOLUMES OF THE ENGLISH EDITION COMPLETE IN ONE. 



NEW-YORK: 

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY 

PHILADELPHIA : 
GEORGE S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT STREET. 

1846. 



Mj Traniftjp 






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PREFACE. 



This Volume contains a republication of the portion of 
Roman History contributed by Dr. Arnold to the " Ency- 
clopedia Metropolitana," between the years 1823 and 
1827. 

It is scarcely necessary to remark, that if his life had 
been prolonged, his great growth in knowledge and ability 
would have given a new character and a much higher value 
to this portion of the History of Rome. It is, however 
believed that these Articles form a valuable part of our lit- 
erature, and are not unworthy of accompanying those Vol- 
umes, which were the fruit of matured years. They will 
carry on the reader through a long and important era, from 
the close of the Second Punic War to the final establish- 
ment of the Empire under Augustus, and will furnish him 
with a consecutive narrative of the events of this period. 

The text is such as the Author left it, with the excep- 
tion that a few trifling inaccuracies of detail have been 
corrected. What seemed to be errors of a more general 
character have been untouched. Some, and amongst 
them, those respecting the Agrarian laws, will be found 
corrected in Dr. Arnold's History of the Earlier Periods ; 



vi PREFACE. 

whilst the alteration of the text would have been an act of 
unwarrantable liberty, and would have destroyed much of 
the psychological interest which must belong to a compari- 
son of the earlier with the later productions of any eminent 
writer. 

The references to the original authorities have been all 
examined and verified. 

Dr. Arnold broke off, after the Life of Augustus, his 
contributions to the continuous series of Roman History in 
tlie Encyclopaedia. He subsequently composed the Life of 
Trajan for that Work. It is reprinted in this Volume. 

BONAMY PRICE. 

Rugby, July 31, 1845. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Sketch of the external advancement of the Roman Empire from the end of the 
Second Punic war to the Invasion of theCimbri. — From a. u. c. 553, b.c. 
201, to A. u. c. 652, B- c. 102 9 

CHAPTER II. 
Tiberius Gracchus. — v. c. 621, b. c. 133 41 

CHAPTER III. 
Caius Gracchus. — From u. c. 621, b. c. 133, to u. c. 633, b. c. 121 .... 56 

CHAPTER IV. 

Sketch of the internal state of Rome from the death of Caius Gracchus to the 
commencement of the Social War. — From u. c. 633, b. c. 121, to u. c. 
662, B. c. 92 69 

CHAPTER V. 
Lucius Cornelius Sylla. — From u. c. 616, a. c. 138, to u. c. 666, a, c. 88. . 89 

CHAPTER VI. 
Lucius Cornelius Sylla. — From u. c. 666, a. c. 88, to u. c. 677, a. c. 77 . . 109 

CHAPTER VII. 

Caius Julius Caesar. — A view of the internal affairs of the Roman Empire. — 

From tr. c. 676, a. c. 78, to u. c. 695, a. c. 59 147 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Caius Julius Caesar. — A sketch of the Roman History from the appointment of 
Caesar to the command in Gaul to his Death. — From u. c. 695 to 710, a. c. 
59 to 44 19® 



vlii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Caius Julius Caesar.— A sketch of the Roman History from the appointment of 
Caesar to the command in Gaul to his Death.— From u. c. 695 to 710, 
A. 0. 59 to 44 [continued] 299 

CHAPTER X. 

Caius Octavius Caesar Augustus. — A view of the History of Rome. — From 

V. c. 709 to u. c. 722, a. c. 45 to a. c. 32 . . . 358 

CHAPTER XI. 

Caius Octavius Caesar Augustus. — A view of the History of Rome. — From 

V. c. 722 to u. c, 766, a. c. 32 to a. d. 13 '. . . 454 

CHAPTER XII. 
M. Ulpius Trajanus Crinitus. — From a. d. 98 to 117 . . , , , , Sl7 



HISTORY 



OF THE 



LATER HOMAN COMMONWEALTH. 



CHAPTER I. 



SKETCH OF THE EXTERNAL ADVANCEMENT OF THE ROMAN 
EMPIRE FROM THE END OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR TO THE 
INVASION OF THE CIMBRI.-FROM A.U.C. 553, B.C. 201, TO A.U.C. 
652, B.C. 102. 

There are certain portions of the history of mankind, in which 
miUtaiy operations assume a character of such predominant im- 
portance, that the historian is bound to assign to them the princi- 
pal place in his narrative. At other times there maybe long and 
bloody wars, by which great changes have been produced in the 
state of the world, which yet deserve no more than the most cur- 
sory notice ; whilst our main attention is bestowed on the progress 
of society, the rise of literature, or the origin and struggles of 
domestic factions. The period to be comprised in this sketch 
belongs to this latter class : it was full of wars ; it was marked 
by decisive victories and extensive conquests ; yet its military 
history is totally uninteresting, from the great inequality of force 
between the Romans and their several enemies ; and from the 
scarcity of those signal displays of valour and ability, which have, 
on other occasions, thrown lustre on the resistance of the hum- 
blest power. Besides, except the " Fragments" of Polybius, we 
have no political nor military history of these times, the authority 
of which can be relied on with any satisfaction, for the detail of 
events. No more then will be here attempted, than briefly to 
trace the succession of the Roman conquests, and to notice the 
causes which rendered them so unbroken and so universal. 

2 



10 BATTLE OF CYNOCEPHALE. 

No sooner was the second Punic war ended than the senate of 
u. C.553.* B.C. 201. Romc detemimed to crush the power of Phihp, 
FirstMacedonian'^ar". j^i^-jg of MaccdoH. He had jolucd Hannibal in the 
most critical period of the late war, when the destruction of Rome 
seemed inevitable ; he was the most considerable potentate in the 
countries neighbouring to Italy on the east ; and the fame of his 
armies, derived from the conquests of Alexander, was not yet ex- 
tinguished. These were considerations sufficient to point him 
out as the next object of hostiUty to the Roman arms ; and 
although peace had been conchided with him two or three years 
before, yet the grounds of a new quarrel were soon discovered. 
He*^ was accused of having attacked the Athenians and some 
others of the allies of Rome ; and of having sent some Macedo- 
nian soldiers to the assistance of Hannibal in Africa, A Roman 
army was instantly sent over into Greece, and a Roman fleet co- 
operated with the naval force of Attains, king of Pergamus, and 
the Rhodians ; these powers, together with the JGtolians, being 
constantly enemies to Macedon, and the present war being under- 
taken by the Romans chiefly, as was pretended, on their account. 
The barbarous ^ tribes on the north and west of Macedonia were 
also led, by the temptation of plunder, to join the confederacy ; 
and their irruptions served to distract the councils and the forces 
of Philip. Yet, under all these disadvantages, he maintained 
Battle of cynocephaie. the coutost witli great vigour for three ^^ears ; till 
o:l.'i45.'4. ■ ■ being defeated in a general action at Cynocephaie 
in Thessaly, and his whole country, exhausted as it already was 
by the war, being now exposed to invasion, he was reduced to 
accept peace on such terms as the Romans thought proper to 
dictate. These, as usual, tended to cripple the power of the van- 
quished party, and at the same time to increase the reputation of 
the Romans, by appearing more favourable to their allies than to 
themselves. Phihp was * obliged to give up every Greek city that 
he possessed beyond the limits of Macedonia, both in Europe and 
in Asia ; a stipulation which deprived him of Thessaly, Achsea, 
Phthiotis, Perrheebia, and Magnesia, and particularly of the three 
important towns of Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, Avhich he 
used to call the fetters of Greece. All these states were declared 
free and independent ; except that the Romans (pretending that 
Antiochus, king of Syria, threatened the safety of Greece) retained, 
for the present, the strong places of Chalcis and Demetrias^ in 
their own hands. Philip was forced also to satisfy the several 
demands of Attains, of the Rhodians, and of the other allies of 

[> According to Niebuhr, Vol. IV. 232, ■'' Livy, XXXI. 28. .38. 41, &c. 

this date should be 552, and that for the * Polybms, XVIII. 27, et seq. 17, and 

battle of Cynocephaie 556, Livy having XVII. 2. 
made an error of one vear. — Ed.] [' Polybiiis, XVIII. 28. — Ed.] 

» Livy, XXX. 42;'XXXI. 5. 



WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT. 1 1 

Rome, except of the ^Etolians, whom it was now the policy of the 
Romans to humble ; as the depression of Philip had left them the 
principal power in Greece. In addition to these sacrifices, he was 
to surrender almost the whole of his navy, and to pay to Rome a 
thousand talents. 

Immediately^ after the conclusion of this treaty followed the 
memorable scene at the Isthmian games, where it was announced 
to all the multitude assembled on that occasion, that the Ro- 
mans bestowed entire freedom upon all those states of Greece 
which had been subject to the kings .of Macedon. The Greeks, 
unable to read the future, and having as yet had no experience 
of the ambition of Rome, received this act with the warmest grat- 
itude ; and seemed to acknowledge the Romans in the character 
which they assumed, of protectors and deliverers of Greece. 

The kingdom of Macedon being now humbled, there was no 
one in a condition to dispute the power of the Romans war wim Antiochus 
in Greece, except Antiochus, king of Syria. This B^.m.' 
prince had lately^ enlarged his dominions by reducing those cities 
on the coast of Asia Minor, which, in the course of the many wars 
between the successors of Alexander, had been gained by the 
kings of Egypt. He now professed his intention of crossing into 
Europe, and re-uniting to his empire those cities and parts of 
Thrace which had been conquered from Lysimachus by one of 
his predecessors ; and which had since been wrested from the 
crown of Syria by the kings of Egypt and Macedon. But the 
Romans having now brought their war with Philip to an end, 
resolved at once to stop the progress of Antiochus ; and their am- 
bassadors, who found him at Lysimachia, required him to restore 
every place that he had taken from Ptolem5r, king of Egypt, and. 
to leave those cities independent, which, J^aving lately belonged 
to Philip, were now destined by the Romans to enjoy their 
liberty. 

Antiochus replied, that the Romans had no more concern in 
the affairs of Asia than he had in those of Italy ; and the ambas- 
sadors departed Avithout gaining their demands. In this state of 
things, the ^tolians,^ who were now totally alienated from the 
Romans, in consequence of the neglect with which they had been 
treated in arranging the terms of the peace witli Philip, eagerly 
solicited the king of Syria to enter Greece, encouraging him to 
hope, that, with their assistance, he might destroy the influence 
of Rome in that country altogether. He accordingly crossed over 
with a small force, and was admitted, through the intrigues of 
the J^^tolians, and the disposition of the inhabitants, into several 
places of importance ; but ^ the Achseans and Eumenes, who had 

6 Polybius, XVIII. 29, et seq. ** Livy XXXV. 12. 33. 43, &c. 

7 Polybius, XVIII. 32, 33, and Livy, » Livy, XXXV. 50, 51 ; XXXVI. 14, 
XXXin. 19. 38. et seq. 



j2 BATTLE OF MAGNESIA. 

lately succeeded Attalus on the throne of Pergamus, declared 
against him, and their forces occupied Chalcis, in Euboea, to se- 
cure it from his attacks. Philip, king of Macedon, also decided 
on taking part with the Romans ; yet, notwithstanding, Anti- 
ochus succeeded in reducing Chalcis, and the whole of Euhoea, 
and won besides several cities in Thessaly, He returned to 
Chalcis to pass the winter ; and the consul, Manius Acilius Gla- 
brio, arriving in Epirus in the ensuing spring, and having marched 
thence into Macedonia to concert measures with Philip, and after- 
wards having advanced into Thessaly, Antiochus took post at 
the famous pass of Thermopylae to oppose his further progress. 
He was easily dislodged, however, by the Romans; and that 
with such severe loss, that he thought it prudent at once to aban- 
don Greece, and to return to Asia by sea from Chalcis, leaving 
the ^tolians to bear, as they best could, the whole weight of the 
Roman vengeance. 

They were accordingly attacked by the consul, Manius Acil- 
ius,'" and, after seeing some of their towns taken, they implored 
and obtained an armistice for a certain period, in order to allow 
them time to send ambassadors to Rome. But the demands of 
the senate being more exorbitant than they could yet bring them- 
selves to accept, the war was again renewed, and Manius" was 
actively employed in besieging Amphissa, when the arrival of his 
successor, L. Cornelius Scipio, afforded the iEtolians another 
respite. The new consul, who was wholly bent on crossing 
over into Asia, to finish the war with Antiochus, w^as easily per- 
suaded to grant the ^Etolians a truce for six months : and their 
affairs were in so desperate a state, that even this doubtful favour 
seemed to them most acceptable. 

Having thus freed himself from the possible danger of leaving 
an enemy in his rear, L. Scipio set forward for the Hellespont,'^ 
accompanied by his brother, the famous Scipio Africanus, who 
acted under him as his lieutenant. The march of the army was 
facilitated to the utmost by Philip, king of Macedon ; who seems 
vainly to have hoped that by a faithful and zealous observance 
of the treaty of peace, he might soften the remorseless ambition 
of the Romans. A naval victory, won by the Roman fleet, en- 
sured the safety of the passage into Asia; and Antiochus,'-'' 
distrusting his own strength, abandoned the sea coast, and con- 
centrated his army near Magnesia and Thyatira. Here he was 
prtue of Magnesia, attackcd by thc Romaus, and totally defeated. 
U.C.564. B. c. 19U. Sardis and several other places surrendered imme- 
diately after the battle; and Antiochus, completely'^ panic-struck, 
sent ambassadors to the consul and his brother, soliciting peace 

»9 Livy XXXVI. 22-35. '■' Livy, XXXVII. 30, 31. 33, et seq. 

♦ ' PolybiuB, XXI. 1, 2. &c. '« Polybius, XXI. 13, &c. 

»« Livy, XXXVII. 1. 7. 



DEFEAT OP THE GALATIANS. X3 

on their own terms. He was ordered accordingly to resign his 
pretensions to any dominion whatever in Europe, and to cede 
every thing that he possessed in Asia westward of Mount Taurus ; 
to pay fifteen thousand talents to the Romans wilhin twelve 
years, to reimburse them for the expenses of the war ; to pay to 
Eumenes, king of Pergamus, four hundred talents in money, and 
a certain quantity of corn, which he had. engaged by treaty to 
pay to the late king Attains ; to give up Hannibal and some other 
individuals who were obnoxious to the Romans ; and to give 
twenty hostages immediately, as a pledge of his sincerity, to be 
selected at the pleasure of the consul. These terms were accepted 
by Antiochus, and hostilities ceased therefore on both sides. Am- 
bassadors were then sent to Rome by Antiochus, to procure a 
ratification of the peace from the senate and people ; and by Eu- 
menes, the Rhodians, and almost every state within the limits 
ceded by the vanquished king, to court the favour of the new 
arbiters of the fate of Asia, and to gain for themselves as large a 
share as possible of the spoils of the Syrian monarchy. After 
the several embassies had received an audience of the senate, the 
peace with Antiochus was ratified,, and ten commissioners'^ were 
appointed to settle all disputed points in Asia ; with these general 
instructions, that all the dominions ceded by the king of Syria 
to the Romans should be given to Eumenes, with the exception 
of Lycia and part of Caria, which were bestowed on the Rho- 
dians, and those Greek cities which had paid tribute to Antiochus, 
and which were now declared independent. But before these 
commissioners arrived in Asia, the Roman arms had been em- 
ployed in another successful war. Cn. Manlius'^ Vulso, who 
succeeded L. Scipio in the consulship and in the command of the 
army in Asia Minor, anxious to distinguish himself by some con- 
quest, had attacked the Galatians, or Asiatic Gauls, on the pre- 
tence that they had furnished assistance to Antiochus ; and, after 
several engagements, had obliged the different Defeat of the caia- 
tribes to sue for peace. Their ambassadors came to '''^^• 
him towards the close of the winter to receive his answer ; and 
about the same time Eumenes and the ten commissioners arrived 
from Rome. A definitive treaty of peace was then concluded with 
Antiochus, in which, besides the concessions formerly mentioned, 
he agreed to give up almost the whole of his navy, and all his 
elephants, and not to make war in Europe, or in the islands of 
the JE,gea.n. 

The Galatians, having been already plundered to the utmost 
during the war, Avere only warned to confine themselves within 
their own limits, and not to molest the kingdom of Eumenes ; and 

•s Polybius, XXII. 7. '« Polybius, XXII. 16. 24, et seq. Livy, 

XXXVIII. 12, et seq. 



14 INTRIGUES OF PHILIP. 

Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who had also given assistance to 
Antiochus, was obliged to deprecate the anger of Rome by the pay- 
ment of six hundred talents ; half of which, however, was after- 
wards remitted to him at the intercession of Eumenes. This last 
prince received a great increase of territory, both in Asia and in 
Europe ; and, together with the commonwealth of Rhodes, was in 
appearance the greatest gainer from the victory of the Romans. 
However, in the mere act of giving away kingdoms at her discre- 
tion, Rome plainly declared the pre-eminence of her own power ; 
and she soon after showed, that she could resume her gifts as 
easily as she had made them, whenever the conduct of her allies 
began to excite her jealousy. 

It has been already mentioned, that L. Scipio, when marching 
towards Asia, granted a truce for six months to the 
Conquest of ^to la. ^|.QJ^g^j-,g . ^^-^^ ^g they could uot yctbc induced to sur- 
render at discretion to the mercy of the Romans, the war was again 
renewed, and M. Fulvius Nobilior,"' the colleague of Gn.Manlius 
in the consulship, crossed over into Greece to complete their sub- 
jugation. He first laid siege to Ambracia, which was vigorously 
defended; but the ^Etolians, now convinced of their inability to 
maintain the contest, sued for peace through the intercession of 
the Rhodians and Athenians ; and terms were at length granted 
them, which besides diminishing their territory, and obliging them 
to pay a sum of mone}^, reduced them to a state of entire depend- 
ence on Rome, by obliging them to follow the Romans in all 
their wars, and to acknowledge and obey the power and sove- 
reignty of Rome. Their fate excites the less compassion, when 
we remember that they first invited the Romans into Greece ; and 
that their faithless and ambitious policy had mainly contributed 
to prevent the union of the Greeks in one powerful state, which 
might have been able long to maintain its independence against 
every enemy. 

Eleven years had not passed since the conclusion of the last 

war with Macedon, when it became apparent that 

Intrigues of Phi ip. ^j^Qti^gj. ^y^g likely to commcnce. In the late war 

with Antiochus, Philip, as has been seen, sided with the Romans ; 
and thus took from the king of Syria the towns of ^Enus and 
Maronea, and some other towns and fortresses on the coast of 
Thrace; and from the ^tolians, several cities Avhicli they had 
occupied in Thessaly and Perrhasbia. All these places, at the 
conclusion of the war, he proposed to retain in his possession ; 
but on one side, Eumenes laid claim'^ to the towns of Thrace, 
insisting that the Romans had given to him that portion of the 
territories conquered from Antiochus ; and on the other, the Thes- 
is Livy, XXXVII. 49 ; XXXVIII. 3, '' Polybius, XXIII. 6. 11. Livy, 
et seq. Polybius, XXII. 9, et seq. XXXIX. 23, et seq. 



ACCESSION OP PERSEUS. ^5 

saliaiis and Perrhasbians demanded the restoration of the cities 
taken possession of by PhiHp in their country, urging that the 
JEtoHans had unjustly seized them, and that on their expulsion, 
they ought to revert to their original and rightful owners. The 
senate, as usual, appointed commissioners to hear and to decide 
on this question ; and sentence was given, as might have been 
expected, against the pretensions of Philip. He had no intention, 
however, to yield without resistance ; but not being yet prepared 
for war, he sought to gain time by sending his son Demetrius'^ to 
Rome to plead his cause. This prince had formerly been one of 
the hostages given by his father for his faithful execution of the 
terms of the last treaty with the Romans ; and he had then so 
won the favour of many of the Roman nobility, that Philip trusted 
much to the influence he might possess on the present occasion. 
Nor was he disappointed ; for Demetrius was sent back with re- 
newed expressions of the kindness entertained for him by the 
senate, and ^° with a promise that out of regard for him, a fresh 
commission should be appointed to reconsider the points in dis- 
pute between Philip and his opponents. Yet the new commis- 
sion confirmed the judgment of the former one; and Philip was 
obliged to withdraw his garrisons from all the contested towns both 
in Thrace and Thessaly : nor did the favour shown by the Ro- 
mans to Demetrius produce any other result than his destruction. 
A suspicion arose that he aspired to succeed to the throne, through 
their support, to the exclusion of his elder brother T^^gicai end of wa 
Perseus. This produced an open enmity between ^°'^' Demetrius. 
the brothers ; and after many mutual accusations of each other, 
Philip, it is said,"' was induced to order the death of Demetrius 
by poison : but, according to the Roman writers, being afterwards 
convinced of his innocence, he intended to deprive Perseus of the 
succession, in abhorrence of his treachery towards Accession of 

his brother. He died, however, before his inten- Perseus, 

tions could be carried into effect, and Perseus ascended the throne 
without difliculty; This account of the private affairs of the 
royal family of Macedon, as it relates to matters ^ ^ 5^5 ^ ^ ^^^ 
not likely to be known with certainty by the pub- °^- "*> ^• 
lie, and as it comes to us from writers disposed to believe every 
calumny against Perseus, merits very little attention. It is only 
known, that the Romans were disposed, from the very beginning 
of his reign, to regard the new king of Macedon with aversion ; 
and-that he, foreseeing that a .war in defence of the independence 
of his crown would soon be inevitable, took every method of ren- 
dering himself popular in Greece, and of strengthening the inter- 
nal resources of his kingdom. 

19 Polybius, XXIII. 14. 2> Livy, XL. 24. 55, 56. 

2" Polybius, XXIV. 2. 6. 



16 SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR. 

The Romans alleged,-^ as the causes of their quarrel with 
Second Macedonian Perscus, that he had made war on some of their 
^^' alHes ; that he had endeavoured to draw away 

others to a connexion with himself, incompatible with their duty 
to Rome ; and that he had hired assassins to make an at- 
tempt on the life of king Eumenes, when returning from Rome, 
whither he had gone to instigate the senate to declare war 
against Macedon. In answer^^ to these charges, Perseus replied, 
that his hostilities with the allies of Rome were purely defensive : 
and the charge of intended assassination he strongly and flatly 
denied. With regard to his endeavouring to seduce the allies of 
Rome from their fidelity, he is made by Livy to refer to a former 
justification of himself on that point, which is not at present to be 
found in Livy's history. However, it is evident that the Romans 
were determined on war, and that the king of Macedon took 
every step, consistent with the independence of his crown, to 
avoid it. Although the Romans^^ had accused him of making 
great military preparations in time of peace, and he was, in fact, 
in a far better condition to commence immediate hostilities than 
they were, yet he lost the opportunity thus afforded him, from 
his anxious desire to negotiate with the enemy ; and when he 
was actually driven to take up arms,"^ and had gained some ad- 
vantage over the consul Licinius, he instantly renewed his'^^ 
offers of peace, consenting to the same terms which his father 
had only submitted to after his total defeat at Cynocephale. 
The most open and unprincipled ambition in modern times, 
would hardly dare to avow such an answer as that made by the 
Roman general, to a proposal so conciliatory. He replied, that 
Perseus must submit himself to the discretion of the senate, and 
allow it to decide on the state of Macedon as it should think 
proper. In other words, the time was now come, when the Ro- 
mans, in their career of conquest, had reached the kingdom of 
Philip and Alexander, and nothing could induce them to delay, 
far less to renounce, their resolution of sacrificing it to their law- 
less and systematic ambition. 

This refusal to negotiate after a defeat, was a general maxim 
of Roman policy, and has often been extolled as a proof of he- 
roic magnanimity. It should rather be considered as a direct out- 
rage on the honour and independence of all other nations, which 
ought, in justice, to have put the people who professed it out of 
the pale of all friendly relations with mankind. In a moment of 
madness, the French Convention, in 1794, passed a decree, that 
the garrisons of the four fortresses on the northern frontier, then 
in the possession of the allies, should be put to the sword, if they 

« Livy. XLII. 30. 40. » Livy, XLII. 47. 

« Livy, XLH. 41. " Polybius, XXVIL 8. 

>* Livy, XLII. 43. 



BATTLE OP PYDNA. 17 

did not surrender within twenty-four hours after they were sum- 
moned. To this decree, a notice of which accompanied the sum- 
mons of the besieging general, the Austrian governor of Le 
Q,uesnoy nobly rephed, " No one nation has a right to decree the 
dishonour of another : I shall maintain my post so as to deserve 
the esteem of my master, and even that of the French people 
themselves." In like manner, a refusal to make peace except on 
their submission, was to decree the dishonour of every other na- 
tion : nor had Rome any right to insist, that whatever were the 
events of a war, it should only be terminated on such conditions 
as should make her enemy the inferior party. Had other nations 
acted on the same principle, every war must necessarily have 
been a war of extermination ; and thus the pride of one people 
would have multiplied infinitely the sufferings of the human 
race, and have reduced mankind to a state of worse than savage 
ferocity. The avowal of such a maxim, in short, placed Rome 
in a condition of actual hostility with the whole world ; and 
would have justified all nations in uniting together for the pur- 
pose of forcing a solemn and practical renunciation of it ; or, in 
case of a refusal, of extirpating utterly the Roman people, as the 
common enemies of the peace and honour of mankind. 

After the refusal of the consul Licinius to negotiate with 
Perseus, the war was protracted for two years more without any 
decisive success ; the Roman officers who were employed in it 
displaying little ability or enterprise, and disgracing themselves 
by flagrant ^^ acts of extortion and oppression towards their 
allies. At last L. ^milius Paullus, son of the consul who was 
killed at Cannes, and himself inheriting his father's reputation 
for wisdom and valour, was chosen consul ; and the province of 
Macedonia falling to his share, he took every method to bring 
the war to a successful issue. Great care was ^^ observed in the 
appointment of the officers who were to serve under him ; and 
when he arrived in Greece and took the command, he greatly re- 
formed the discipline of the army, and brought it into a high 
state of order and activity. His exertions were Battle of pydna. End 
soon rewarded by the battle of Pydna, of the S.'''"'"'"" "'''"" 
details of which we have only the account of oL^illfi. ^'^' '^^' 
Plutarch, but the event is abundantly known. The Macedonian 
army was totally destroyed ; the cities of the kingdom succes- 
sively surrendered to the conquerors ; and Perseus himself short- 
ly after gave himself up to the consul's mercy. He was taken 
to Rome Avith his family, to adorn the triumph of iEmilius ; and, 
according to Paterculus, died about four years afterwards at 
Alba,^9 w^hich was assigned as the place of his confinement. His 

"'' Livy, XLIII. 4, 5, 6, &c. would be nearer the truth to say, that 

'"* Livy, XLIV. 21. 34. Perseus was murdered by the Romans ; 

^ Vid. Veil. Patercul. L 11. — But it for after having suffered such cruel treat- 



13 CONDUCT OF ROME TO HER ALLIES. 

principal nobility, and every man ^° who had ever held any office 
under him, were ordered to transport themselves into Italy, on 
pain of death, lest they should disturb the new settlement of their 
country. Macedonia was then divided into four districts ; each 
of which was to be under a republican government. Half the 
tribute formerly paid to the king, was henceforward to be paid to 
the Romans, who also appropriated to themselves the produce of 
all the gold and silver mines of the kingdom. The inhabitants 
were forbidden to fell timber for ship-bui,lding ; and all intermar- 
riages and sales of land between the people of the several dis- 
tricts were forbidden. With these marks of real slavery, they 
were left, for the present, nominally free ; and Macedonia was 
not yet reduced to the form of a Roman province. 

It is curious to observe, how, after every successive conquest, 
Conduct of Rome to tlic Rouiaus altered their behaviour to those allies 
her allies. ^y}-^Q ^^d aided them to gain it, and whose friend- 

ship or enmity was now become indifferent to them. Thus, after 
their first war with Philip, they slighted the .^tolians ; after they 
had vanquished Antiochus, they readily listened to complaints 
against Philip ; and now the destruction of Macedon enabled 
them to use the language of sovereigns rather than of allies to 
their oldest and most faithful friends, Enmenes, the Rhodians, 
and the Achgeans. The ^' senate first tampered with Attalus, the 
brother of Eumenes, hoping that he might be persuaded to accuse 
his brother, and to petition for a share of his dominions ; but 
when they found him deaf to their temptations, they retracted 
some promises which they had before made him, in the hope that 
he would listen to them. Afterwards, when Eumenes himself 
landed in Italy on ^^ his way to Rome, with the view of removing 
the suspicions entertained against him, the senate, aware of his 
purpose, issued an order that no king should be allowed to come 
to Rome ; and despatched one of the quaestors to announce it to 
him at Brundusium, and to command him to leave Italy immedi- 
ately. The Rhodians had offended by declaring openly, " that 
they ^^ were tired of the war with Perseus ; that he, as well as 
the Romans, was the friend of their commonwealth ; that they 
should wish to see the contending parties reconciled ; and that 
they would themselves declare against those whose obstinacy 
should be an impediment to peace." This declaration, Miiich 
was received at Rome most indignantly, had been privately re- 

ment in the dungeon to wliich he was under their persecutions. — Vid. Fragment. 

at first consigned, that iEniiUus Paullus Diodor. Sicul. XXXL 893, edit. Rhodom. ; 

complained of it in the senate as a nation- and Mithridatis Epistolam, apud Fragm. 

al disgrace, he was removed to a less mis- Sallust. 

erable prison ; and there having offended '" Livy, XLV. 32. 29. 

the soldiers who guarded him, they, in ^' Polybius, XXX. 1, et seq. 

revenge, harassed him night nnd day, and ^- Polybius, XXX. 17. 

never allowed him to sleep till he expired " Polybius, XXIX. 7. Livy.XLIV. 14. 



CONDUCT OP ROME TO HER ALLIES. jg 

commended by Q. Marcius, the Roman consul, to one of the Rho- 
dian ambassadors, who had visited him in his camp in Macedo- 
nia, during the preceding year : and Polybius ^* reasonably con- 
jectures, that Marcius, confident of a speedy victory over Perseus, 
gave this advice to the Rhodians with the treacherous purpose of 
furnishing the senate with a future pretence of hostility against 
them. However, their fault was punished by the loss of Lycia 
and Caria,'^ which the senate now declared independent; and 
the individuals Avho were accused of favouring Perseus were 
given up to the Romans, ^^ or at the instigation of Roman officers 
were put to death by the Rhodian government. Nor should it 
be " omitted, that a general inquiry was instituted throughout 
Greece into the conduct of the principal men in the several states 
during the late war. Those who were accused by their country- 
men of the Roman party of having favoured Perseus, were sum- 
moned to Rome to plead their cause as criminals ; and some were 
even put to death. But if the mere opinions and inclinations of 
individuals were thus punished, the states which had actually 
taken part with Macedon met with a still heavier destiny. Let 
it be for ever remembered, that by a decree ^^ of the senate, seven- 
ty towns of Epirus were given up to be plundered by the Roman 
army, after all hostilities were at an end ; that falsehood and de- 
ceit were used to prevent resistance or escape ; and that in one 
day and one hour seventy towns were sacked and destroyed, and 
one hundred and fifty thousand human beings sold for slaves. 
The instrument employed on this occasion was L. ^milius Paul- 
lus, the conqueror of Macedon, and one of those whom we are 
taught to regard as models of Roman virtue. There is no reason 
to doubt his sincere afiection for his country, his indifference to 
money, and his respectability as a citizen, husband, son, and fa- 
ther. But it is useful to see what dreadful actions the best men 
of ancient times were led unhesitatingly to commit, from the utter 
absence of a just law of nations, and the fatal habit of making 
their country the supreme object of their duty. Nor is it possible 
that these evils should be prevented, unless truer notions have in- 
sensibly established themselves in the minds of men, even of 
those who are least grateful to the source from which they have 
derived them ; and if modern Europe be guided by purer princi- 
ples, the Christian historian cannot forget from what cause this 
better and happier condition has arisen. 

It remains now that we speak of the conduct of the Romans 
towards the Achseans. The early history of the Achaean league, 
and the leaning of its councils towards a friendly connexion with 

^ Polybius, XXVIIL 15, ss Polybius, XXX. 15. Livv, XLV. 

3* Polybius, XXX. 5. 8. 34. Plutarch, in Vita iEmilii Paulli, c. 

36 Livy, XLV. 10. 29. 
39 Livy, XLV. 31. 



20 CONDUCT OF ROME TO HER ALLIES. 

Macedon, has been already noticed. In the war between the 
Romans and Phihp, however, the Achasans were persuaded to 
join with the former ; a step which Polybius^^ describes as abso- 
lutely necessary for their safety ; whether it were altogether 
equally honourable, we have hardly the means of deciding. But 
their new connexion, whatever may be thought of its origin, was 
ever afterwards faithfully observed ; insomuch that the Romans, 
though sufficiently adroit in finding matter of complaint, when 
they were disposed to do so, and though offended by the free and 
independent tone which the Achaean government always main- 
tained towards them, could yet obtain no tolerable pretext for 
attacking them. There was, however, a traitor amongst the 
Achaeans, named Callicrates," who, jealous of the popularity of 
the ruling party in the councils of his country, endeavoured to 
supplant them through the influence of Rome ; and to ingratiate 
himself with the senate by representing his opponents as despisers 
of the Roman authority, which he and his friends vainly endea- 
voured to uphold. After the Macedonian war, his intrigues^' 
were carried to a greater extent than ever. He accused a great 
number of the most eminent of his countrymen of having favoured 
the cause of Perseus ; and although the conduct of the Achaean 
government towards Rome had been perfectly blameless, and 
nothing was found among the papers of the king of Macedon 
which confirmed the charge, even against any of its individual 
citizens, yet, on the demand of the Romans, more than a thousand 
of the most eminent men in the commonwealth were arrested 
and sent into Italy, under pretence that they should be tried for 
their conduct at Rome. On their arrival in Italy, they were con- 
fined in the diflerent cities of Tuscany, and there remained 
nearly seventeen years. The senate repeatedly refused the peti- 
tion of the Achaean government, that they might either be released, 
or else be brought to trial. It is added, that whoever among them 
were at any time detected in endeavouring to escape, were invaria- 
bly put to death. At last,^^ after most of them had died in cap- 
tivity, the influence of Cato the censor was exerted in behalf of 
the survivors, at the request of Sicpio ^milianus, who was 
anxious to serve one of their number, his own familiar friend, the 
historian Polybius. But the manner in which Cato pleaded their 
cause deserves to be recorded. He represented the Acha3aii 
prisoners as unworthy of the notice of the senate of Rome : " We 
sit here all day," said he, " as if we had nothing to do, debating 
about the fate of a few wretched old Greeks, whether the under- 
takers of Rome or Achaa are to have the burying of them." We 
have dwelt the more fully on this treatment of the Achaeans, 

39 Polybius, XVn. 13. ••' Polybius, XXX. 10. Pausanias, 

*° Polybius, XXVI. 1, et seq. Achaea, 10. 

« Polybius, XXXV. 6. 



ACH^AN WAR. ^1 

because it sets in the clearest light the character of the Roman 
government ; and enables us to appreciate the state of the world 
under the Roman dominion, when such men as Polybius were 
subject to the worst oppression and insolence from a nation which 
boasted of Cato the censor as one of its greatest ornaments. 

Hitherto, however, Achaea and the rest of Greece still enjoyed 
a nominal independence, notwithstanding the real importance of Andns- 
supremacy of the Roman power. But within little u"'o. eos. b. c.isi. 
more than twenty years from the overthrow of Per- °l- ^^^^ ^■ 
sens, even these poor remains of freedom were destroyed. A man ^ ^ 
of low condition, named Andriscus, availing himself of his per- 
sonal resemblance to the royal family of Macedon, assumed the 
name of Philip, and pretending that he was the son of Perseus, 
was joyfully received by the Macedonians. After a short contest, 
he was defeated and led prisoner to Rome by Q,. Cascilius Metel- 
lus ; and from henceforward Macedon was placed entirely on the 
footing of a Roman province. The fall of Achaea 
followed almost at the same time. It appears^* that '^ »anwar. 

a party had lately acquired an ascendency in the Achaean coun- 
cils, warmly inclined to throw off the control of Rome ; but with- 
out the wisdom or integrity which had enabled Philopoemen and 
Lycortas to command respect from the Romans, while they avoid- 
ed giving them the slightest pretence for attacking their indepen- 
dence. The party now in power, on the contrary, seemed bent 
upon provoking a war with Rome. They attacked Lacedgemon, ^^ 
which, although obliged to become a member of the Achasan con- 
federacy, was on all occasions ready to break off its connexion ; 
and when the Lacedaemonians appealed to Rome, and commis- 
sioners were sent as usual to give their judgment, the Acha3an 
government treated them with the utmost indifference, and took 
the most violent measures for exciting popular feeling throughout 
Greece against the arbitrary interference of the Romans. The 
ferment was at its height when the commissioners, who had 
arrived at Corinth, ^^ pronounced it to be the pleasure of the senate, 
that not only Lacedsemon, but Corinth also, and Argos, and 
several other states which had been united with the Achacans, 
should now be separated from them, because they had originally 
formed no part of Achaea. Nothing can be said in excuse of this 
decision, which was alike insolent and unjust ; yet where resist- 
ance is so evidently hopeless, as it was at this time in Greece, it 
must ever be condemned as a useless aggravation of a people's 
sufferings. The whole frame of society was loosened by the 
Achaean leaders ; and great immediate evils were occasioned with 
no reasonable prospect of theirleading to permanent good. Slaves^'' 

*^ Livy,Epitom. XLIX. 1. Florus. II. ''^ Pausanias, Acliaica, 8, et seq. 

14. Jornand. I. ^^ Pausanias, Achaica, 14. 

" Polybius, XXXVII. 1, &c. " Polybius, XL. 2 ; XXXVIII. 3. 



22 CAPTURE OP CORINTH. 

were set at liberty, and enlisted to swell the Achaean army; debtors 
were protected from their creditors ; and heavy requisitions were 
laid on all individuals, male and female, to contribute to the wants 
of the commonwealth. But there was no corresponding spirit in 
the people ; and these strong measures which, if adopted volun- 
tarily, often produce effects so wonderful, were considered vexa- 
tious and oppressive when enforced by an unpopular government. 
Metellus at this time commanded in Macedonia ; and wishing to 
win the double glory of being the pacificator of Macedon and 
Achasa, he was anxious to persuade the Achasans to submit 
before Mummius the consul should arrive to take the command 
against them. His advances were slighted, because they were 
attributed to fear; and an Achasan army^^ marched towards 
Thermopylae to oppose his march into Greece. But so totally 
unequal were the Greeks to the maintenance of this contest, that 
they abandoned their ground on the first approach of Metellus ; 
and, being overtaken on their retreat, were immediately and com- 
pletely routed. Metellus then advanced towards Corinth, having 
reduced Thebes and Megara on his march ; and his offers of 
peace being again rejected, he was obliged to surrender the task 
of finally subjugating Greece to L. Mummius, who about this time 
Capture of Corinth, arrlvcd from Italy. The new commander finished 
dh.'m.' ' ' the war in a single battle, under the walls of Co- 
rinth. Diaeus, the Achaean general, fled to Megalopolis, and there 
destroyed himself by poison ; the Corinthians, for the most part, 
abandoned their city, and Mummius entered it with little or no 
resistance. But every horror that follows the most hardly-won 
capture of a town by storm, was practised with deliberate cruelty. 
Most of the citizens were slain ; the women and children were 
sold for slaves ; the temples and houses were alike ransacked ; 
and Corinth, finally, was burnt to the ground. The Achaean 
league was then dissolved, and Greece was henceforward treated 
as a province, was subjected to tribute, and v/as governed by a 
Roman proconsul, or praetor. 

We have thus related the final overthrow of Grecian inde- 
pendence somewhat more particularly than the difficulty of the 
conquest or its particular importance might seem to demand. 
Something, however, is due to the memory of ilhistrious names; 
and interested as we are from our childhood in the fortunes of 
Greece, the story of its fall cannot be read without attention. It 
now remains that we turn to a scene in itself far more striking, 
and presenting a still more painful picture of misery and atrocious 
ambition, the third Punic war, and the destruction of Carthage. 

Since the time at which Hannibal was obliged to abandon his 

*" Pausaniap, Achaica, 15, 16. 



STATE OF CARTHAGE. 23 

country, by the animosity of those whose corrup- 
tions he had exposed and checked, and by the ^^° carthage. 
jealousy of the Romans, Carthage seems to have rested quietly in 
the state of humiliation to which the event of the second Punic 
war had reduced her. Forbidden as she was, by the terms of 
the treaty of peace, to take up arms against the allies of the Ro- 
man people, she was obliged to suffer repeated aggressions on 
the part of Masinissa, king of Numidia ; and when, as her only 
resource, she applied to Rome " for protection, she found a tardy 
and insufficient redress. She observed, however, faithfully, the 
conditions of her submission ; and Carthaginian ships formed a 
part of the Roman fleet, in the wars with Antiochus, and with 
Perseus.^" But when some years had elapsed after the destruc- 
tion of the Macedonian monarchy, the Romans, having no other 
enemy to attract their attention, felt their hatred of Carthage re- 
vive ; and it was openly professed by some members of the senate, 
that the very existence of that commonwealth ought no longer to 
be permitted. The resistance which the Carthaginians had been 
at last driven to make to the continued encroachments and hostil- 
ities of Masinissa, furnished the Romans with a pretext for declar- 
ing war; and the two consuls, with two consular armies and a 
large fleet, were despatched to Sicily, in order to cross over from 
that island into Africa as soon as possible. The Carthaginians 
had tried every means of pacifying the Romans, without throw- 
ing themselves entirely upon their mercy ; but when they found 
that an army was actually on its way to attack them, and that 
Utica,^' the most important of all their dependencies in Africa, 
had already offered an entire submission to the Romans, the dan- 
ger seemed too great for any further hesitation ; and their ambas- 
sadors at Rome announced to the senate, that Carthage yielded 
herself up entirely to its disposal. In return, they were promised 
the enjoyment of their laws and liberty, and the uninterrupted 
possession of their lands and moveable property, on condition that 
they should send over to Lilybaeum, within thirty days, three 
hundred children, of the first families in Carthage, as hostages, 
and that they should obediently receive the commands which 
the consuls should deliver to them on their arrival in Africa. 
A vague suspicion of the fate that awaited them possessed 
the Carthaginians on the return of their ambassadors ; still they 
resolved to persevere in their submissions. The hostages were 
sent to Lilybasum, and then were despatched to Rome ; and a 
deputation waited on the consuls, soon after their landing at Utica, 
to know the final pleasure of the senate, and to express the readi- 
ness of Carthage to obey it. The consuls commanded that all 

« Appian, Punica, 68, 69. so L^^y, XXXVI. 42 ; XLII. 56. Po- 

lybius, XXXVI. 1, et seq. 
s' Appian, Punica, 69, et seq. 



24 THIRD PUNIC WAR. 

arms, offensive and defensive, and all engines of war, should be 
surrendered to them ; and even this was complied with/^ A 
number of members of the supreme council, of priests, and 
of other individuals of the greatest distinction in Carthage, 
followed the long train of wagons in which the arms were carried 
to the Roman camp. They hoped to move compassion, by the 
sight of all that was most noble and most venerable in their 
country reduced to the condition of suppliants. But one of the 
consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, having arisen, and composed his 
countenance, says Appian, to an expression" of sternness, briefly 
told them, " That they must abandon Carthage, and remove to 
any place more inland, that should be about nine or ten miles 
distant from the sea ; for Carthage," said he, "we are resolved to 
raze to the ground." This declaration was received by the Car- 
thaginians who heard it, with the most lively emotions of rage 
and despair ; they vented curses against the Romans, as if wish- 
ing to provoke them to forget the sacred character which they 
bore. To this burst of passion the deepest grief succeeded ; they 
bewailed the fate of their country with such agony of sorrow, that 
it is said even the Romans were moved to tears ; and they at- 
tempted even yet to obtain from the consuls a mitigation of their 
sentence. But when Censorinus repeated that the orders of the 
senate must be performed, and that immediately, and when the 
lictors began to drive the deputation from the consuls' presence, 
they begged to be heard again for a few moments ; and then said, 
that they only entreated the Romans to advance Avith their fleet 
instantly to the city, to prevent the people from provoking their 
utter destruction by some act of despair. Censorinus accordingly 
moved forwards with twenty ships, and remained off the mouth 
of the harbour, while the Carthaginians brought back the report 
of their doom to Carthage. 

The tidings were received with one common feeling of indig- 
Third Punic war. uatlou by tlic siiprcmc councll and by the people, 
u. c. 605. B. c. H9. Generals were chosen immediately ; and when the 
consuls refused to grant a truce for thirty days, in order that am- 
bassadors might be sent to Rome, war was at once resolved on ; 
and the whole population, men and women alike, began to labour 
night and day in the fabrication of arms, to supply the place of 
those which they had surrendered. The consuls, after waiting 
some days, to see if the ferment would subside, at length marched 
towards Carthage and the operations of the siege commenced. 
But such was the strength of the fortifications, and such the 
spirit of their defenders, that, notwithstanding their want of arms, 
they repulsed every attempt of the enemy ; and the Roman army, 
baffled by the Carthaginians, and suffering from sickness, saw 

*' Appian, Punica, 80, et seq. *^ Appian, Punica, 80. 



SIEGE, CAPTURE, AND DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. 35 

the year draw to a close without having obtained any other 
success than such as the extreme wickedness of the cause de- 
served.^* Nor were the consuls of the following year more fortu- 
nate; and the spirit of the Carthaginians, encouraged by their 
long resistance, began to anticipate a final deliverance. Masi- 
nissa, the old ally of Rome, was drawing near the end of his life ; 
and whilst promising succours to the Roman army, evidently 
showed no real disposition to assist it.^^ 

But in the third year of the war, P. Scipio ^Emilianus, the 
son of iEmihus Paullus, but adopted into the fam- gjegg, capture, and 
ily of Scipio by the son of the famous Africanus, thigel*'""" °^'^^^' 
was elected consul, and appointed to the command u.c.eos. B.c.ue. 
in Africa by an especial vote of the people. He had greatly dis- 
tinguished himself under the former consuls, when serving as a 
miUtary tribune ; and there was besides a superstitious persuasion 
among the people in his favour, that the Scipios were destined to 
be the conquerors of Carthage. On his succeeding to the com- 
mand, his first care was to restore the discipline of the army, 
which had suffered greatly from the misconduct of the last con- 
sul ; and by his ability in this respect, as well as by his skill in 
the conduct of the war, he soon destroyed all the hopes of the 
Carthaginians. The situation of Carthage, from this time, began 
to resemble the picture left us of the miseries of Jerusalem in its 
last siege by Titus. Numbers died of famine through the strict- 
ness of the blockade ; numbers deserted to the enemy; while As- 
drubal, who commanded the principal military force in the town,^® 
was himself rioting in luxury, and exercising the greatest tyranny 
over his countrymen ; his conduct, as a general, at the same time, 
being totally destitute of courage and wisdom, and marked only 
by savage cruelty towards the prisoners who fell into his power. 
Yet^'' the city continued to hold out during the year of Scipio's 
consulship ; and the winter was employed by him, successfully, 
in reducing the strongholds which still remained in the power of 
the Carthaginians in the neighbouring country. In the following 
spring, his command being still continued, he resumed the siege 
with vigour ; and, by a combination of assaults, succeeded in 
forcing his way into one of the quarters of the city, when famine 
had enfeebled the bodies and the spirits of its defenders. But the 
Byrsa, or citadel, still remained untaken; and six days were 
consumed in a horrible struggle from street to street, and from 
house to house ; in the course of which, fire and the sword, and 
the ruin of falling buildings, combined to carry on the work of 
destruction to the uttermost. At last the remnant of the inhabit- 
ants sued for mercy, and it was granted them ; such mercy a& 

»* Appian, Punica, 97, etseq. " Polybius, XXXIX. 2. 

'* Appian, Punica, 94. " Appian, Punica, 126, et seq. 



26 PROGRESS OF THE ROMAN ARMS. 

was practised in ancient times, when hopeless slavery, without 
distinction of sex or age, was the lot of all whom the sword had 
spared. Fifty thousand individuals were thus made prisoners, 
to enrich their conquerors by the price to be paid for them in a 
slave market at Rome ; and the victorious army was then allowed 
to plunder the city for several days. Shortly after, a commis- 
sion^^ often senators was sent from Rome, as usual, to determine 
•the future condition of the conquered country. By their orders, 
whatever part of the buildings of Carthage had survived the 
siege, was now levelled with the ground ; and curses were im- 
precated on any man Avho should hereafter attempt to build on 
the spot. The territory was subjected to a tribute, and governed 
henceforth as a Roman province, with the exception of certain 
portions which were given to the people of Utica and Hippo, as a 
reward for their timely desertion of the Carthaginian cause. Thus 
was the great rival of Rome totally destroyed, only a few months 
before the final conquest of Greece, in the year of Rome 608, 
and about a hundred and forty-six years before the Christian 
era. 

It will now, perhaps, be most advisable to trace the progress 
Progress of the Ro- of the Rouiau amis in Spain and Gaul; then to 
man arms in Spain, noticc the accessious to tlicir empire gained in Af- 
rica by the conquest of Jugurlha ; and to conclude with a general 
view of the extent of their dominion at the period which forms 
the limit of the present sketch. The end of the second Punic 
war had left the Romans no other enemies in Spain to contend 
with than the natives themselves ; but these were of so stubborn 
and warlike a temper, that it was not easy to effect their subjuga- 
tion. It may be asked, what claim of right could be advanced 
by the Romaiis in attempting this conquest ; and no answer can 
be given, except that a civilized nation, in its intercourse with an 
uncivilized one, easily finds grounds of quarrel, while it exacts 
from men, ignorant of all law, an observance of those rules, which 
men, in a more advanced state of society, have agreed to call the 
law of nations. Those Spanish tribes that had been subject to 
Carthage, were treated by the Romans, on the defeat of the Car- 
thaginians, as a conquered people, were subjected to a tribute, and 
governed with the usual arbitrary authority of the Roman provin- 
cial magistrates. If they attempted to shake off the yoke, it was 
not unnatural that some warriors of those tribes, which were yet 
independent, should join the armies of their countrymen ; and this 
afforded the Romans a pretext, sometimes, for demanding hostages 
from the people whose citizens had been found in arms against 
them ; or, sometimes, for requiring the surrender of their arms ; 
conditions which, since in their eyes they implied degradation, 

" Appian, Punica, 135, et seq. 



NUMANTIAN WAR. 



27 



were generally refused, and thus gave occasion to war. If, on 
the contrary, they were acceded to, the Romans would proceed to 
exercise some acts of sovereignty which would provoke the tribes 
to take up arms ; or the mere detention of their hostages was a 
continual irritation to their minds, which at last would break out 
in open hostility. Or, if this pretence failed, there was another 
which could scarcely ever be wanting. If the vanquished 
soldiers of any tribe engaged in war with Rome, received from their 
countrymen the ordinary succours of humanity ; if they were en- 
tertained or sheltered, this was called assisting the enemies of the 
republic, and was supposed to justify a Roman general in demand- 
ing satisfaction from those who had been guilty of it. This was 
the original cause of the quarrel between Rome and Numantia.*^ 
Thirdly, if there were any tribes whose situation, or whose cau- 
tion, had preserved them from any sort of connexion with the 
enemies of the Romans, some dispute amongst themselves was 
likely, sooner or later, to arise, and the vanquished party was 
always sure to find in the Romans, willing and effectual support- 
ers. The Roman^" generals instantly interfered as arbiters ; and 
if their decision was not submitted to, they presently proceeded 
to enforce it by arms. A system like this steadily pursued 
amongst a warlike and independent people,, naturally furnished 
the Romans with an occasion of attacking, in their turn, the in- 
, habitants of every part of the peninsula. Of all these, the most 
obstinate and successful in their resistance were the Lusitanians 
and Numantians. The first, under ^' the command of Viriathus, 
a chief of remarkable enterprise and ability, maintained the con- 
test for several years, and defeated several of the Lusitanian war ends. 
Roman officers; till their leader was assassinated Numantianwar.' 
by three of his followers, at the instigation of Servilius Caepio, 
the Roman general, then commanding against him. Numantia 
has acquired still greater fame, by the disgraces which its inhab- 
itants inflicted on the Roman arms, and the desperation of their 
final defence. They obliged a Roman consul,^^ C. Hostilius Man- 
cinus, to purchase the safety of his army by an unfavourable 
treaty ; and when the senate, in contempt of the public faith, 
refused to ratify the terms, and ordered Mancinus to be given up 
to the enemy to expatiate his act with his own life, the Numan- 
tians refused to accept him : and the Roman writers record, with- 
out a blush, this contrast between the honour of the barbarians 
and their own perfidy. At last, Scipio ^Emihanus, the conqueror 
of Carthage, was elected consul, on purpose to carry on the war 
with Numantia. With an army of 60,000 men, he blockaded the 

*« Floras, II. 18. «2 Appian, Hispanica, 80. 83. Velleius 

^^ Appian, Hispanica, 51. Paterculus, II. 1. Floras, II. 18. 

®' Appian, Hispanica, 61, et seq. Floras, 
II. 17. Velleius Paterculus, II. 1. 



28 DESTRUCTION OF NUMANTIA. 

city, the armed population of which had never exceeded^' 8000 ; 
and fearing to encounter the despair of the inhabitants, he hem- 
med them in, with hues of circumvallation, and waited patiently 
till famine should do his work for him without danger to himself. 
The Numantines tried to obtain tolerable conditions ; but they 
had been too formidable to find mercy from an enemy like the 
Romans, who never had any sympathy with courage from which 
they themselves had suffered. Finding that they had no hope 
Destruction of Nu- left, the bcsicged mostly destroyed themselves and 
u.^c.'62i. B.C. 133. their relations, and a few only surrendered alive to 
the conqueror. He selected^^ fifty of their number to adorn his 
triumph, the rest he sold for slaves, and then levelled Nuraantia 
to the ground ; and for such a victory, so hardly won, over an 
enemy so inferior in numbers and resources, he was extolled with 
the highest praises at Rome, and received the surname of Nu- 
mantinus. Still, even after the destruction of Numantia, the 
Spaniards continued, at various times, to maintain the struggle 
for liberty ; nor were they fully reduced to obedience till a much 
later period than that with which we are now concerned. 

The Romans were first led to carry their arms into Transal- 
, pine Gaul, by an application from the people of the 

'" ''"■v Greek colony of Marseilles to protect them against 

the assaults of some of the native tribes in their neighbourhood. 
An embassy to this effect remains recorded in one of the Frag- 
ments^^ of Polybius, and appears to have taken place as early as 
the year of Rome 600 ; but no important consequences seemed to 
have followed from it immediately. About twenty-eightyears af- 
terwards, however, on a new complaint from the people of Mar- 
seilles, a Roman army attacked and conquered the Salyes,®^ a 
tribe of Transalpine Gauls ; and after their defeat, the AUobroges 
and Arverni, their neighbours, were accused of having given them 
assistance, and of having offered injuries also to the ^dui, another 
Gaulish tribe, which had before obtained the friendship of Rome. 
Several victories were gained over these new enemies, and one or 
two colonies were founded in Gaul, such as" Aqua) Sextise, or 
Aix, in Provence, planted by C. Sextius, and Narbo,*^ or Nar- 
bonne, the origin of which is fixed a little later. By these means 
the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, on both sides of 
the Rhone, from the Alps to the Pyrenees, and extending inland 
as far as the Jura^^ and the mountains of Auvergne, were reduced 
to the form of a Roman province, about the year of Rome 632. 

*• Appian, Hispan. 97. Florus makes «'' Livy, Epit. LXI. — Cnssiodori Chro- 

them only four thousand, II. 18. nicon. 

8* Appian, Hispan. 98. 68 Velleius Patercultis, I. 15. 

« Polybius, XXXIII. 4. «» Pliny, Hiator. Natural. III. 4. 

66 Florus, III. 2. Livy, Epitom. LX. 
LXI. Appian, Gallica, 12. 



HISTORY OP JUGURTHA. 39 

While the republic was thus extending its dominion in Spain 
and Gaul, its empire in Africa received an import- g^et^^ ^^ jj^g ^j^j^ry 
ant addition in the conquest of Numidia. After ofJ"g"rtha. 
the destruction of Carthage, the principal part of the territories of 
that commonwealth were at once subjected to the Roman govern- 
ment ; and thus the Romans were brought into close contact with 
the kings of Numidia, whose dominions lay to the west and south- 
west of Carthage, and stretched along the coast of the Mediter- 
ranean till they were bounded by the confines of Mauritania. 
The name of Numidians, borrowed from the Greek term Nomades, 
signifi.es a people who live by pasturage, and has accidentally 
become the peculiar appellation of the native tribes in the west of 
Africa ; although under the government of Syphax, Masinissa, 
and Micipsa, they seem to have been in many respects advanced 
far above a mere pastoral life. Micipsa,'^" the son of Masinissa, 
divided his kingdom between his sons Hiempsal and Adherbal, 
and his nephew Jugurtha ; but on his death, Jugurtha, who was 
much older than his cousins, and who had acquired military ex- 
perience and high distinction by serving in the Roman army at 
the siege of Numantia, at once proceeded to assassinate Hiempsal, 
and then openly invaded the dominions of the surviving prince 
Adherbal, He easily overcame him, stripped him of his territories , 
and obliged him to fly to Rome for refuge and redress. But 
dreading lest the Romans should avail themselves of so fair a 
pretext to seize upon the kingdom of Numidia for themselves, he 
strove to deprecate their enmity by employing bribery to a large 
extent among the members of the senate ; and thus nothing was 
done in favour of Adherbal, except the sending a commission of 
ten senators to Africa, to divide the kingdom between him and Ju- 
gurtha, It is said,''' however, that this commission was also 
corrupted by Jugurtha, and thus was induced to assign to him by 
far the most valuable share of Micipsa's inheritance. Of this he 
took advantage, and in a short time he again attacked Adherbal, 
defeated him, shut him up in the strong town of Cista, and there 
besieged him for some months, till the Italian soldiers, who formed 
the most effective part of the garrison, persuaded Adherbal to sur- 
render himself to his rival, and stipulating only for his life, to rely 
for every thing else on the interposition of Rome. But no sooner 
had he given himself up, than Jugurtha ordered him to be put to 
death in torments. 

Sallust, the warm partisan of Caesar, and anxious, therefore, 
to vilify to the utmost the character of the senate, asserts ''^ that 
even this flagrant crime would have been passed over with im- 
punity, owing to the influence which Jugurtha had obtained by 

70 Sallust, Bell Jugurthin. 9, et seq. ^2 Bell. Jugurthin. 27. 

71 Sallust, Bell. Jugurthin. 16. 



30 JUGURTHINE WAR. 

his bribes among the nobility, had not one of the tribunes roused 
the feelings of the people, and denounced the scandalous motives 
to which, as he said, the senators were sacrificing the honour of 
their country. However this be, war was declared against Ju- 
gurtha, and L. Bestia Calphurnius, one of the consuls, was sent 
over to Africa to commence hostilities against him. Still, we are 
told," Jugurtha continued to employ his usual arts ; 
ugurt mev.ai. ^^^^ ^^_^^ cousul, after Suffering the campaign to be 
protracted in fruitless negotiations, at last granted his enemy 
peace, on condition of his laying down his arms, and submitting 
himself and his kingdom to the Romans. But only a small part 
of Jugurtha's resources were in fact surrendered, and the consul 
returning to Rome to preside at the elections for the ensuing year, 
the war was as far from conclusion as ever. The succeeding 
season was equally unproductive of any decisive event ; but to- 
wards the close of it, when the consul Sp. Albinus had, as usual, 
returned to Rome, the army which he left under the command of 
his brother, sustained a severe defeat from the enemy, and was 
reduced to such difficulties as to purchase its retreat by a promise 
of evacuating Numidia within ten days ; and, it is added, by con- 
chiding a treaty of peace. But Jugurtha, who had served at Nu- 
mantia, must have remembered how lightly the senate could 
violate the stipulations made by its officers ; and he could not rea- 
sonably calculate on gaining any other advantage from his agree- 
ment, than the getting rid of the Roman army for the present. 
The treaty, as he might have expected, was immediately disa- 
vowed at Rome, and the new consul, Q,. Csecilius Metellus, was 
likely to prove a far more formidable adversary than those whom 
he had hitherto encountered. Metellus was bent on prosecuting 
the war in earnest. He reformed the discipline of the army, 
which is always described as faulty, when the usual career of 
Roman victory was delayed or interrupted ; but he did not scru- 
ple, at the same time, to tamper'^ with the several officers whom 
Jugurtha sent to him to propose terms of peace, and to tempt them 
to betray, or even to assassinate their master. He evaded giving 
any decisive answer to (he offers made to him, but continued to 
advance into the heart of Jugurtha's country, and had deprived 
him of a large portion of his resources, before the Numidian per- 
ceived that his enemy was merely amusing him, and that he had 
nothing but the sword to trust to. In the course of the campaign, 
Metellus gained some advantages, but he received also several se- 
vere checks from the activity of Jugurtha, who turned to the best 
account his own perfect knowledge of the country, and the pecu- 
liar excellence of his subjects in desultory warfare. Experience, 
however, taught Metellus to guard more completely against this 

" Bell. Juffurthin. 29. '* Bell. Jusurth. 46. 



RISE OF CAIUS MARIUS. 



31 



kind of annoyance ; and his intrigues were so successful with the 
principal officers of his enemy, that Jugurtha found those whom he 
had most trusted engaged in a conspiracy against his life ; and 
although he escaped the immediate danger by patting them to 
dea h, his prospects for the future were overcast with fear, and he 
regarded every one about him with suspicion. Meantime the fa- 
mous Caius Marius,'^ who had served with dis- 

... iTiTiii !• !• 1 Rise of Caius Marius. 

tinction under MeteUus as his second in command, 
impatient of holding an inferior station, and coveting to himself 
the glory of conquering Jugurtha, had obtained leave to go to 
Rome, and offer himself as a candidate for the consulship. He 
was a man of low birth, and totally iU iterate, but active and able, 
with power sufficient to make him feared by the nobility, and 
with ^n inveterate hatred against them, because their scorn of his 
mean condition galled his pride, and impeded his way to great- 
ness. Bv depreciating''^ Metellus, and promising 

•^ 1 , -r j-i n • 1 ■ His first consulship. 

soon to end the war it the command were in his 
own hands, lie won the favour of the multitude ; for invectives 
against high birth and station, joined to an unabashed self-assur- 
ance, are powerful pleaders with the low and the ignorant ; and 
he was elected for the first time to that office which he afterwards 
filled more frequently than any other Roman, and in which he 
was the author of as signal military services, and as great do- 
mestic injuries, as any one individual has ever been known to 
bring upon his country. 

Marius, soon after his election, received from the people, in 
spite of a contrary resolution of the senate, the com- He is appointed to 

■■^ T ^ , • TvT -J- 1 xi J J. command against Ju- 

mand of the army in Numidia, and the conduct gunha. 
of the war with Jugurtha. On his arrival in Africa, he found that 
some of the most important towns in Numidia had been taken 
by Metellus, and that Jugurtha had implored and obtained the 
assistance of Bocchus, king of Mauritania, so that he had an ad- 
ditional enemy to encounter. But Bocchus, having no direct in- 
terest in the quarrel, did not refuse to listen to the overtures of the 
Roman general, and promised himself, if the fortune of war should 
prove adverse, to secure his own interests by surrendering Jugur- 
tha to his enemies. However, for the present, the two kings 
were in close alliance with each other ; and Marius, in hopes of 
bringing them to action, employed himself in besieging some of 
the most valuable towns and fortresses in the Numidian domin- 
ions. It is worthy of notice, that at Capsa,^'' a strong place in 
one of the remotest parts of the country, after it had been surren- 
dered, the whole male population was massacred, the women and 
children were sold for slaves, and the city was plundered and 

15 Bell. Jugurth. 63, 64, &c. 77 Sallust, 91. 

76 Sallust, 64. 



32 EXTENT OF ROMAN DOMINION. 

burnt, for no other reason than because the place was inconven- 
ient for the Romans to garrison, and the people were not thought 
trustworthy. If we remember how strong a sensation has been 
excited in our own times by the massacre of the Turkish prison- 
ers at Jaffa, and then observe how Sallust excuses^^ the conduct 
of Marius at Capsa, we shall somewhat understand how dreadful 
were the atrocities of Roman warfare, and how degraded the con- 
dition of Roman morality. 

The loss of these towns drove Jugurtha and Bocchus, as Ma- 
rius had hoped, to try their fortune in the field, and he defeated 
them in two battles with severe loss. This disposed the king of 
Mauritania to open a communication with the Romans, the man- 
agement of which was intrusted by Marius'^^ to L. Cornelius 
Sylla, his quasstor, and after much debate, Bocchus consented to 
win the favour of Rome, by betraying Jus;urtha. 

Betrayal of Jugurtha. . ,. , , . ., j i .1 o'n j ^t 

Accordmgly, havmg allured both Sylla and Jugur- 
tha with the hope that he was going to deliver their enemy into 
their hands, he proposed that they should have a meeting with 
each other, to discuss the possibility of concluding a peace, and 
when the appointed time came, he ordered Jurgurtha to be seized, 
Death of Jugurtha. ^-^^ delivered him bound to Sylla. He was by him 
U.C.648. B.C. 106. taken to the head-quarters of Marius. aud from 
thence conducted to Rome, led in triumph^" with his two sons be- 
for the chariot of the conqueror, and then put to death in prison. 
His own crimes had well deserved his punishment, but they in no 
way lessen the iniquity of the Romans in inflicting it, by no other 
right than that of conquest. 

By the event of this war, Numidia was added to the list of 
Extent of Roman Romau provluccs. It was uot till a somewhat 
dominion. j^tor pcrlod that the republic acquired Cyrene and its 

dependencies, by the bequest of their king, Ptolemy Appion ; and 
Egypt and Mauritania remained unconquered till the times of 
the Cassars. In the year of Rome 652, the date at wirich the pre- 
sent narrative closes, the dominions, formerly subject to Carthage, 
and the kingdom of Numidia, were all that the Romans possessed 
in Africa ; and these extended, to speak generally, along the coast 
of the Mediterranean from the greater Syrtis^' to the river Amp- 
saga, or the town of Sardis, corresponding nearly with the limit 
between the modern governments of Tunis and Algiers. Their 
limit towards the interior, it is impossible precisely to ascertain ; 
and indeed, in fixing the extent of the Roman empire at any one 

79 Id facinns, contra jus belli, non avari- 79 Sallust, 102, ct. seq. 

tia, neque scelere consulis admissum : sed ^o Livy, Epitom. LXVII. 

quia locus Jugurthae oppoitunus, nobis 81 PHny, Hisior. Natur. V. 2, 3. Slra- 

aditu difficilis: genus hominum mobile, bo, XVII. p. 1)72. edit. Xyland. 
infidum, neque beneficio neque nietu coer- 
citum. 91. 



EXTENT OP ROMAN DOMINION. 33 

period, minute accuracy, if attainable at all, would not repay the 
labour of arriving at it ; because, our materials for the history of 
Rome are by no means full and uninterrupted ; and many coun- 
tries were at one time given away to some ally, and then again 
united to the empire, and thus are sometimes included amongst 
the provinces, and sometimes spoken of as independent. Again, 
in some parts, as for example, in the countries between Macedo- 
nia and the Danube, continual warfare was carried on for ages 
between the Romans and the natives ; and whilst a victory would 
nominally extend the bounds of the empire, by leading to the 
submission of various tribes, any change of circumstances would 
presently contract them, by exciting the new subjects to revolt. 
Besides, the imperfect state of ancient, and we may add, of mod- 
ern geography, makes it difficult, if not impossible, with regard 
to many quarters of the Roman empire, to fix the limits of prov- 
inces or of countries loosely inhabited by barbarian tribes ; and 
even where there is any great natural division spoken of as the 
boundary, such as the Rhine and the Danube, at a later period, 
or the chain of Mount Taurus, after the war with Antiochus, 
there might be natural fastnesses, and wild districts, even within 
the general frontier, which defied the Roman authority, and fur- 
nished the provisional officers with occasions of victories and tri- 
umphs. These considerations may excuse the imperfections, or 
even the inaccuracies, of that sketch of the extent of the empire, 
which we now propose to offer. 

"What has been already said in the course of the narrative, will 
sufficiently show the nature and extent of the Roman power in 
Africa, Spain, and Gaul. The Balearian^- islands were conquered 
by Q,. Metellus about the year 630, complaint having been made 
that the inhabitants infested the sea with piracies. Sardinia and 
Sicily had been gained from Carthage, as has been mentioned 
in a former part of this history, before the second Punic war ; and 
Corsica had been conquered at the same time with Sardinia, but 
it seems to have been considered of little importance ; and there 
is no mention of any attempt having been made on it by either 
party, during the war with Hannibal. Melita, or Malta, of which 
we speak only on account of its modern celebrity, was first taken, 
according to Livy,^^ in the very first year of the second Punic 
war ; and at the end of that war, was finally ceded by the Car- 
thaginians, together with their other islands in the Mediterranean. 
The whole of Italy, in the modern sense of the term, was already 
subject to the Romans; although the Ligurians and Istrians 
were still probably in a state of imperfect obedience. To the 
eastward, the countries between the Danube and Greece offer, as 

82 Strabo, III, p. 177. edit. Xyland. as Livy, XXI. 51. 
Florus, III. 8. 



34 EXTENT OP ROMAN DOMINION. 

we have said, the most indistinctly marked portion of the empire. 
A part of the eastern coast of the Adriatic had been conquered, 
even before the second Punic war ; or rather underwent the first 
introduction to conquest, in becoming^^ allied to the Romans. In 
the second Macedonian war, Gentius, a king^^ of a large part of 
Illyria, having allied himself with Perseus, paid the penalty of 
losing all his dominions. Dalmatia, to the north-west of Illyria, 
skirting the Eastern coast of the Adriatic, had been first at- 
tacked and partially subdued by C, Marcius Figulus*^ and P. 
Scipio Nasica, in the years of Rome 597 and 598 ; but triumphs 
continued to be earned, by victories in Dalmatia, even down to 
the time of Augustus : and the same may be said of Thrace, and 
the other countries to the north of Macedonia, which remained 
so long in a wild and unsettled state, that we read of revolts in 
Thrace" even in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. If we turn to the 
southward, Macedonia,^® Thessaly, and Epirus, are said to have 
been reduced at one time to the form of a province, at the end of 
the third Macedonian war, in the year of Rome 608. The south- 
ern states of Greece were also subjected to the government of a 
Roman praetor, by the decree of the ten commissioners, who, as 
usual, were sent to determine^ ^ the future condition of the country, 
after the destruction of Corinth. By their decision, the popular 
assemblies were every where abolished, and the local administra- 
tion was made strictly oligarchical ; but afterwards, the old assem- 
blies were restoi'ed, when the power of Rome was so securely es- 
tablished, that such empty shows of liberty might be granted 
without danger. 

By the termination of the war with Antiochus, Rome, as we 
have seen, gained to herself, nominally, no dominion in Asia. 
But as she claimed^" the right of resuming at pleasure, such 
gifts of territory as she awarded to her allies, she may thus be 
considered the actual sovereign of Lycia and Caria, which she 
bestowed on the Rhodians, and of Phrygia, Lydia, and several 
other provinces, which were given to the king of Pergamus. The 
first actual province,^' however, which the Romans formed in 
Asia, consisted of the dominions of their oldest allies ; of those 
very kings of Pergamus, who had given them such useful aid in 
all their wars with the Greek princes and conimonM''ealths, from 
the first contest with Philip, king of Macedon, to the final over- 
throw of the Achaean confederacy.^^ Attains, the son of Eume- 
nes, dying in the year of Rome 620, left his dominions by will to 

84 Polybius, II. 11 ; III. IG. 89 Pausanias, Achaica, 86. 

85 Appian, Illyrica, 9. 9" Appian,Numiclica,§3,edit. Schweig- 

86 Appian, Illyrica, 11. Livy, Epitoin. haeuser. 

II. 91 .Tornandes, I. Florus, II. 20. 

8T Tacitus.Annal. II.64;IV.46,et8eq. 92 Strabo, XIII. p. 721; and XIV. p. 
88 Rufus Festus. Jornandes. 744, edit. Xyl. Livy, Epit. LIX. 



CAUSES OF THE ROMAN CONGlUESTS. 35 

the Roman people. But Aristonicus, a natural brother, as some 
say, of the late king, endeavoured to obtain the kingdom for him- 
self, and at first met with some success, but was afterwards de- 
feated and taken, and according to the usual practice of the Ro- 
mans, was led in triumph, and afterwards put'^ to death. It is 
mentioned by Florus,^^ that Manius Acquilius, by whom this war 
was brought to an end, did not hesitate to poison the wells, in 
order to reduce some of the revolted cities to submission ; nor 
does it appear that for so dreadful a crime, his conduct was ever 
called in question by his government. In this manner, by the 
overthrow of Aristonicus, the kingdom of Pergamus was reduced 
into the form of a province, which was called peculiarly the pro- 
vince of Asia. Along the southern shore of the Euxine, the king- 
doms of Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pontus, still subsisted under 
their native sovereigns ; and from the last of the three, was soon to 
arise an enemy, only second to Hannibal in the abilities and 
obstinacy with which he so long combated the Romans, the 
famous Mithridates. To the south of the province of Asia, the 
countries of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, were not yet formally 
annexed to the empire ; although Lycia and Pamphylia, having 
been among, the districts ceded by Antiochus, enjoyed their 
liberty only as a gift from Rome. Further to the eastward, the 
Romans, as yet, had made no advances : Crete and Cyprus were 
untouched ; and Rhodes, taught^^ by the treatment it received 
after the war with Perseus, had been since careful to purchase 
its municipal independence by the utmost deference to the will of 
the senate and its officers. 

Great as was the empire which the Romans had by this time 
acquired, none of their conquests, since the end of causes of the Roman 
the second Punic war, were such as can at all sur- conquests. 
prise us. The ascendency of a well constituted army, and a good 
system of military policy, over the utmost perfection of rude cour- 
age or individual ability, is so well known, that the gradual reduc- 
tion of Spain, of Gaul, of Thrace, and of Illyricum, as well as the 
subjugation of Numidia, may be considered as matters of course. 
Carthage, at the time of its final struggle, was hardly more than 
a single city ; and the long disuse of arms had taken away all 
the opportunities, by which good officers, and an efficient milita- 
ry system are created ; to which we may add, that the Cartha- 
ginians helped their own ruin, by the surrender of their arms and 
engines of war, at the very moment when they were most needed. 
Antiochus was a prince of little ability or courage, and the event 
of the first general battle frightened him into submission ; nor 
can the issue of that battle in itself appear wonderful, when we 

93 Paterculus, 11. 4. Strabo, XIV. p. si Floras, II. 20. 
744. Sigonius, Comment, in Fest. et ^ Rufus Festus. Jornandes. 
Triumph. Romanorum. 



36 CAUSES OP THE ROMAN CONaUESTS. 

remember how little skill and discipline have ever been found in 
the organization of Asiatic armies ; and that the kings of Syria 
were, by this time, fully infected with the ignorance and weakness 
of Asia. It is only in Greece and in Macedon that we might 
have expected a longer and a more doubtful contest. The coun- 
try which first sent forth regular armies to war, and the infantry 
of which had long maintained so complete a superiority over the 
soldiers of all other nations, ought not, we may think, to have 
bowed beneath the yoke of Rome, without signalizing its fall by 
some heroic effort, and yielding to its enemy a dearly purchased 
victory. The posterity of Xenophon, of Epaminondas, and of 
Alexander, might surely have inflicted on Rome a second Cannae, 
before they suffered defeats more humiliating than that of Zama. 

But, in fact, the circumstances of the Macedonian and Achaean 
wars abundantly explain the easiness with which the Romans 
obtained their successes. In their first contest with Philip they 
hemmed him in on every side with enemies, and the resources of 
Macedon were exhausted by the plundering parties of the iEto- 
lians and Dardanians on one side, and, on the other, by the united 
fleets of Rome, Pergamus, and Rhodes, which infested the coasts ; 
and by the main consular army, the ranks of which were swell- 
ed by the contingents of half the states of Greece. The battle 
of Cynocephale was the only regular action in the whole war ; 
and its result laid open to the victorious army the whole of Thes- 
saly, and the entrance into Macedon itself As for the event of 
that battle there is no reason to dispute the judgment of Polybius, 
who pronounces the Macedonian tactics to have been unable to 
compete with the Roman ; and Hannibal's authority ought to 
have determined all other commanders to oppose the Roman 
legion with troops armed and organized in the same manner. 
Neither Philip nor Perseus were able generals ; and the monar- 
chy of Macedon was so rudely constituted, that all depended on 
the personal character of the sovereign ; nor could the king have 
seen, without jealousy, and probably without danger, the actual 
control of his armies in the hands of a subject, whose abiUty 
might supply his own deficiencies. Had Hannibal been the gen- 
eral of the Macedonians, his genius would probably have so mod- 
ified the Grecian tactics, as, without forfeiting their own peculiar 
advantages, to have given them some of the improvements of 
the system of their enemies, and thus he might have changed 
the fortune of particular battles ; but, where the force of the two 
contending powers was so unequal, he could scarcely have hoped 
to alter the event of the war. 

With regard to the Greek republics, in addition to the inferior- 
ity of their tactics, which they shared in common with the Ma- 
cedonians, they laboured under a defect peculiar to themselves, 
and arising naturally from their inconsiderable extent and power, 



NATIONS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE. 



37 



and the insigniJ&cant scale on which they had been used to see 
miUtary operations conducted. Tiiough much individual courage 
existed amongst the generals and soldiers, yet war had assumed 
a character of less horror, from the balanced strength of the sev- 
eral commonwealths, the habit of avoiding extreme measures on 
either side, and the comparatively little slaughter with which their 
battles were accompanied. The Romans, on the contrary, made 
it a part of their policy to give war its most terrible aspect. 
Their battles were decisive and bloody ; the very wounds which 
were inflicted by their favourite weapon, a heavy sword, equally 
calculated for slabbing or for cutting, wore an appearance of pe- 
culiar ghastliness ; and in the storming^® of towns, they added 
to the usual horror of such scenes by deliberately lopping the 
limbs of the dogs and other animals which fell in their way, on 
purpose to exaggerate the impression of the destruction occasion- 
ed by their arms, A large army of twenty or thirty thousand 
men, conducting a campaign on this system, and regarded, be- 
sides, with that terror which civilized nations usually feel towards 
those whom they consider barbarians, filled the minds of the 
Greeks with fearful imaginations of its superior strength and fe- 
rocity ; exactly in the same manner, and from the same causes, 
as the little states of Italy, in the fifteenth century, trembled be- 
fore the impetuous courage of the French ; when they found that 
the field of battle was made the scene of actual and terrible 
slaughter, and not, as in their own insignificant encounters, a 
mere stage for the display of their arms and their manoeuvres. 

Thus victorious over every enemy, and removed, as it might 
have seemed, far above any apprehension of dan- sketch of the nations 
ger, the Roman republic was suddenly obliged to '^^j'J.^p'^'"^ the north of 
struggle for its very existence ; and amidst all its warlike popu- 
lation could find one man alone to whose guidance it could ven- 
ture to trust its armies in this alarming emergency. The reader 
will perceive that we are alluding to the invasion of Italy by a 
vast swarm of barbarians from the north of Europe, known by 
the various names of Cimbri, Teutones, Ambrones, and Tigurini. 
And here we cannot but remark a striking peculiarity in the state 
of the most civihzed of the ancient nations, which widely dis- 
tinguishes them from the empires and kingdoms of modern Eu- 
rope. The Greeks and Romans saw almost before their eyes the 
limits of that world with which alone they were concerned, and 
beyond which they knew nothing. The Alps and the moun- 
tains of Thrace were like the enchanted barriers of romantic 
story, beset with so many various perils, that the inhabitants of 
the region which they inclosed attempted not to surmount 
them. A few vague reports, brought by some enterprising trader, 

« Polybius, X. 15. 



38 SKETCH OF THE NATIONS 

and collected amidst the difficulties of imperfectly understood di- 
alects, from the fabling ignorance of barbarians, were the only 
information which could be gained concerning those vast coun- 
tries which are now the seat of so many mighty empires, from 
the Danube to the Frozen Ocean, from China to the British Isles. 
Yet this unknown region was not like the sands of Africa, the 
unpeopled and impracticable wastes of which afford the countries 
on which they border their best security against the attacks of 
an enemy ; on the contrary, the north of Europe teemed with 
inhabitants, and might be likened to a volcano, the inward work- 
ings of which cannot be seen, nor the causes of its eruptions 
traced, but which, from time to time, pours forth upon the cities 
at its base a sudden and unforeseen destruction. In this manner 
the earliest Greek historian^'' records the irruptions of Cimmerian 
and Scythian tribes into the more civilized parts of Asia, the- 
dominions of Lydia and Media ; and the earliest memorials of 
Italy bear testimony to similar invasions of the Celts or Gauls, 
who sometimes overran, and sometimes permanently occupied, 
the countries to the south of the Alps. In process of time, as 
the Roman power extended itself, Gaul became better known, 
and it was found that inroads from that quarter were no more to 
be dreaded, for the Gauls were now become a settled people, and, 
instead of wandering forth to prey on others, had acquired those 
comforts which began to induce their more barbarous neighbours 
to prey upon them. But if Gaul had ceased to inspire alarm, it 
was not so with the wide tract of country, which from the Rhine 
and the Alps extended eastward and northward, far beyond the 
knowledge or even the reasonable conjectures of the Romans. 
Amidst the forests with which Germany was then overspread, 
there was nurtured a race of men, bold, strong, hardy, and totally 
uncivilized, delighting in war, and despising the confinement of a 
settled habitation ; numerous, from the unchecked instinct of pop- 
ulation, where nothing more was coveted than a bare subsistence, 
yet still occasionally multiplying to such a point that even this 
could not readily be found, and then pouring forth upon wealthier 
countries, to gain by their swords, in a manner to them most wel- 
come, indulgences which not even the labour that they hated 
could have procured for them at home. We are now to record 
the first assault made by this people on the dominions of Rome ; 
from which period the Romans, as their power increased, for a 
long succession of years were in their turn the assailants, and 
advanced the limits of their empire and their knowledge from the 
Alps to the Danube. Beyond that river they could never pene- 
trate ; and soon after they had ceased to go forward with their 
conquests, the Germans renewed their old incursions upon them, 

" Herodotus, Clio. 15. 103. 



INHABITING THE NORTH OF EUROPE. ^ 

till the empire was totally dismembered, and Italy itself, together 
with its provinces, submitted to the sceptre and the laws of a 
northern conqueror. 

It was just at the close of the war with Jugurtha, that the 
alarm of the Cimbri and Teutones was at its height in Rome. 
They had been first heard of about eight or nine years before, 
when they attacked the province^^ of lUyricum, and there defeated 
Cn. Papirius Carbo, one of the consuls, with a consular army. After 
this victory they turned their course in another direction, and are 
said to have attacked several nations^^ of Gaul, and even to have 
penetrated into Spain ; but being repelled from that country, they 
presented themselves on the frontiers of the Roman province 
of Transalpine Gaul ; and requested admittance, as settlers, into 
some part of the Roman dominions, offering to employ their arms 
in the service of the republic, as a return for the lands which 
they should hold. On receiving a refusal, they proceeded to gain 
their ends by force ; and in two successive years they defeated 
two other Roman consuls in Gaul : but, with the caprice of bar- 
barians, instead of following up their successes, they were allured 
in pursuit of some other objects, and left the Romans for two 
years unmolested. But in the year of Rome 648, they again fell 
upon them, and defeated two consular'"" armies united, with such 
terrible slaughter, that the capital itself was filled with alarm, and 
all men concurred in raising Marius to the consulship, as the only 
commander capable of saving his country. Fortunately, perhaps, 
for his reputation, the Germans again forbore to cross the Alps, 
and moved off into Spain ; and being a second time driven back 
by the natives, they re-crossed the Pyrenees, and spent another 
year in wandering over Gaul ; while Marius had been re-elected 
a third and a fourth time to the consulship, and had thus the rare 
advantage of becoming thoroughly acquainted with his army, 
and inuring them to exertion"" and implicit obedience by the 
strictest disciphne, and by employing them in some of those 
laborious works which afterwards became so familiar to the 
Roman legions in all parts of the empire. Thus when, in his 
fourth consulship, the Cimbri, reinforced by some other German 
hordes, attacked the Romans at once in Transalpine Gaul and 
towards the north-eastern side of Italy, Marius not only com- 
pletely destroyed' the multitude by which he was assaulted in 
Gaul, but hastening immediately after his victory to the support 
of Lutatius Catulus, his colleague, engaged the other division of 
the enemy in conjunction with him, and gave them a second over- 
throw as complete as the first, in the neighbourhood of Verona. 

' 93 Appian, Gallica, 13. Livy, Eoitom. '<» Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 114. Livy, 

LXIII. * Epit. LXVII. 

99 Caesar, Bell. Gallic. VII. Floras, loi Plutarch, in Mario, 13, et seq. 
III. 3. 



40 NATIONS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE. 

By these battles their force was entirely broken, and the alarms 
which had so long disturbed the minds of the Romans were 
totally dispelled. 

Here, then, this portion of our narrative closes. From the 
period at which we are now arrived, ten years only elapsed 
before the beginning of the war between Rome and the states 
of Italy, and thirteen before the first expulsion of Marius, and 
thfe commencement of the civil war. These transactions, to- 
gether with some of an earlier date, such as the seditions of the 
Gracchi, and the revolt of the slaves in Sicily, will form a fit 
introduction to that history of the domestic afiairs of the republic, 
upon which we now propose to enter. 



CHAPTER II. 

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.— U.C. 621, B.C. 133. 

There are few portions of history more deserving our attention 
than that to which we now return, the civil wars of Tiberius Gracchus. 
the Romans. The origin of these wars arose from ^- ^- ^^^- ^- ^- ^^^• 
the conflict between the interests of the two great divisions of 
society — the rich and the poor. The characters and events which 
marked their progress, possess every quality most fitted to awaken 
a lively interest in the reader ; and their final issue in establish- 
ing a monarchy as the government of the civilized world, may 
possibly have exercised an influence over the fate of Europe, 
which we feel even at this day. They are most remarkable also, 
as they exhibit the state of mankind at the period immediately 
preceding the promulgation of Christianity : when, therefore, if 
experience be the measure of knowledge, the world must have 
attained to the highest point in intellectual and moral discoveries 
which it has ever reached without the assistance of revelation. It 
will surely be no uninteresting inquiry to collect, so far as we 
can, the general amount of human virtue and happiness antece- 
dently to the great revolution introduced by the preachers of the 
Gospel, in order that we may judge of the probable result of the 
destruction of Christianity, which some avowedly, and many in- 
directly, consider as desiraljle. 

The period then of the civil Avars of Rome, which comprises 
somewhat more than a hundred years, from the tribuneship oi 
Tiberius Gracchus to the final establishment of monarchy in the 
person of Octavius Caesar, divides itself naturally into two 
portions. The first of these ends at the death of Sylla, and the 
ascendency of the aristocratical party, which was eifected by his 
government. And it is upon this first division that we now pre- 
pare to enter. 

At Rome, as in many other countries, the original distinctions 
between the diflerent ranks of society were wholly arbitrary. 
The patricians and plebeians were two separate castes, be- 
tween which insurmountable barriers existed. No wealth, nor 
talents, nor virtues, could raise a plebeian to the rank and pri- 

4 



42 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

vileges of a patrician ; and as all intermarriages between the two 
classes were unlawful, the government was an hereditary oligar- 
chy, from which the bulk of the nation, with their posterity for 
ever, were by law utterly excluded. The details of the particu- 
lar events by which this system was overthrown, belong to the 
earlier period of Roman history. Before the Punic wars, how- 
ever, it was entirely subverted ; all offices of state w^ere laid open 
to the plebeians, while the tribuneship w^as still, as before, exclu- 
sively their own : and a more liberal aristocracy was formed, in 
which nobility began to be derived from the possession of high 
political dignities, instead of being the necessary previous qualifi- 
cation for obtaining them. But a third caste in the commonwealth 
still subsisted, composed of those persons who either by birth, or 
by captivity in war, or by the violence of regular slave traders, 
were doomed to the condition of slavery. The fortune of this 
caste was not so totally without hope as that of the old plebeians, 
because a slave might be enfranchised ; and when once a free- 
man, the course of time, or extraordinary personal merit, might 
remove the taint of slavery from his blood, and raise his posterity 
to honours and -powder. But so long as he remained a slave, his 
degradation was complete ; he was not considered as a member 
of the commonwealth, he could hold no property except by his 
master's sufferance ; and his protection from the extremity of per- 
sonal violence w^as little better than nugatory. The little notice 
which the ancient writers have paid to this class of men, has per- 
haps prevented us from sufficiently estimating their effect on the 
state of society. We cannot, however, form a correct notion of 
the relative situations of the rich and the poor at Rome, without 
keeping in mind the existence of so large a proportion of the w^hole 
population in the condition of slavery. The numbers of slaves 
increased greatly with the increasing dominion of the republic ; 
we have already seen how many w^ere carried off from Africa, in 
the descents made on that coast in the two first Punic wars; fifty 
thousand more are mentioned as having been taken at one time in 
the destruction of Carthage ; and no fewer than a hundred and 
fifty thousand were sold for the benefit of the army that had de- 
feated Perseus, collected from the sack of seventy towns in Epirus. 
These were purchased in large multitudes, and probably at a 
low price, by the great landed proprietors of Italy, and generally 
superseded the use of free labourers, as their w^ork w^as much 
cheaper, and could be exacted with greater severity. In conse- 
quence of this, the lowa^r orders of freemen were reduced to great 
distress, and their numbers were rapidly diminished, insomuch, 
that in process of time, there was no such thing as a free peasantry 
to be found in some parts of Italy, slaves being used almost ex- 
clusively as agricultural labourers, and forming probably by 
much the largest proportion of those employed in trade or man- 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 



43 



ufactures. At the same time, the legions were filled with none 
but freemen ; and they whose swords gained the republic her 
conquests, were impatient at seeing the fruits of their victories 
pass into the hands of others, while their own condition was ab- 
solutely rendered worse by the consequences of their own valour. 
For we must not attribute our own notions on public matters 
to the citizens of the ancient commonwealths. The states of 
antiquity being for the most part only single cities, political asso- 
ciation was regarded very much in the light of a commercial 
partnership, of which national property formed as it were the 
stock; and any acquisitions made by the national arms were 
looked upon as the profits of the trade, in which every partner 
ought to share. Thus, when territory was gained in war, the 
bulk of the people wished to have an immediate division of it 
made amongst them; whilst the government or. managing part- 
ners, were anxious that it should still be employed in advancing 
the joint interests of the whole body, instead of enriching the in- 
dividual shareholders. In other words, they wished it to be sold 
to the highest bidder, and the price to be thrown into the treasury 
to supply the usual wants of the public service. This in fact was 
the system usually adopted at Rome ; and thus large landed 
estates came into the hands of the rich, whilst the poor fancied 
that they did not gain in their due proportion from the growing 
greatness of their country. To remedy the evil, a popular tribune 
in the early ages of the republic, C. Licinius, had proposed and 
carried the famous law which bears his name, and which limited 
the amount of land which any citizen might possess, to 500 jugera, 
calculated by Arbuthnot at equal to 330 English acres. But this 
law was sometimes evaded by land being held for the proprietor 
under other names,' and was sometimes openly disregarded. 
During the second Punic war, however, and the period that fol- 
lowed it for several years, the nobility enlarged their estates with- 
out opposition, partly, perhaps, because the aristocratical interest 
was at this time all powerful, and partly, because as the lands 
were alienated by regular sale, so long as the former owners 
could find employment as tenants or labourers, and were not su- 
perseded by the general substitution of slaves, the change in their 
condition was patiently borne. But when they found themselves 
every where supplanted by a class of men whom they so thor- 
oughly despised, they either saw themselves debarred altogether 
from rearing a family, or they were forced to migrate to Rome, 
and swell the multitude of needy citizens in that city. The 
temptation thus offered to them to disturb the existing order of 
things, was peculiarly strong. As individuals, the poor often 
suffered from the grasping and oppressive spirit of the rich : yet, 

1 Plutarch, Vita Tib. Gracchi, 8. 



44 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

as members of the popular assembly, they formed a part of the 
sovereign power in the state, and might amply retaliate on the 
higher orders for the losses they had sufiered. And here it be- 
comes an exceedingly curious question, what was the general 
character of the popular party at Rome ; what was their station 
in society ; and what were their moral and intellectual attain- 
ments ? as it is on a knowledge of these points that our judgment 
of the disputes which so long distracted the commonwealth must 
mainly depend. For if the comitia were no better than an igno- 
rant and profligate rabble, no true friend to liberty can possibly 
sympathize with their cause : but if they consisted of men indus- 
trious though poor, of men whose views were diiected towards a 
reasonable and definite object, whose private morals were fair, 
and who respected law and order, we shall then not brand them 
with the name of anarchists, merely because ihe reform which 
they proposed to efiect, could in our days be attempted by none 
but the most desperate enemies of the peace of society. 

The Roman plebeians, or all those citizens not of patrician ex- 
traction, whose property did not entitle them to be ranked among 
the equestrian order, may be divided into two classes ; those who 
lived habitually in Rome, and those who were settled as small land- 
ed proprietors, as tenants of national property, or as labourers, in 
difierent parts of Italy. The former were naturally those who 
chiefly composed the popular assemblies, and they consisted of 
shop-keepers and mechanics, and of that lowest description of 
populace by which great towns in a genial climate are especially 
infested ; where sheher and fuel and clothing being less important, 
they can more easily live without regular employment, as having 
fewer wants to provide for, and where even the food required is 
of a lighter quality, and consists of article? procurable at the 
cheapest rate, such as fruit, vegetables, oil, and the light wine 
of the country. These men would have all the qualities fitted to 
make them mischievous : idleness, improvidence, a total absence 
of all the feelings of honest independence, and a great sense of 
their own importance, both as freemen, while so many who enjoy- 
ed far more personal comforts were slaves, and as members of a 
body whose power was the greatest in the world. Nor must we 
at all judge of the shop-keepers at Rome by those of London or 
Paris. The sale for their goods would lie chiefly among the com- 
mon ppople, because the rich supplied themselves with most of 
the articles they consumed, from the produce of their lands and 
the labour of their slaves. Their profits therefore were not likely 
to be very considerable, and their rank in society would be pro- 
portionably low. If we then remember the illiterate aiUiO of the 
Roman people in general at the period of which we are now 
speaking ; and if we reflect besides, that whatever literature did 
exist must have been confined almost exclusively to the higher 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 45 

orders from the expensiveness of books ; we cannot ascribe much 
general or poHtical information to the plebeians of the city. Last 
of all, we know what the morals of the lower classes in large 
cities are at this day, when their opportunities of being rightly 
taught are far greater than could possibly have been enjoyed at 
Rome. Without descending to the mere idle and dissolute populace, 
we should probably have found in the bulk of the plebeian inhab- 
itants a sense of their own interest generally predominant, a vio- 
lent and cruel spirit towards those whom they looked upon as 
their opponents, and an obstinacy in maintaining blindly their 
own notions, mixed at the same time with many kind and gen- 
erous afiections towards their families and friends, and an attach- 
ment to the name and institutions of their country, which was 
liable indeed to be misled or overpowered for a time, but which 
was in the main strong and sincere. The plebeians of the coun- 
try are generally spoken of by Roman writers as a more respect- 
able class than those of the city. They were more steadily in- 
dustrious, as having less to call oif their attention from their 
own employment : they were more domestic in their habits, and 
not only less apt for political contests from their manner of living, 
but in their houses and fields they possessed a property which 
they were less willing to hazard in civil commotions. The beau- 
tiful picture which Virgil gives of the simplicity and happiness of 
the small landed proprietors of Italy, although of course highly 
embellished, was doubtless not altogether imaginary ; and it may 
be added, that the hardheartedness to the general welfare of the 
poor, which is so often the fault of our farmers, was less called 
into action aniong the Romans, in whose country there were no 
poor-rates nor parochial offices to excite a continual soreness 
in an uneducated mitid ; and where the farmer had scarcely 
any connexion with more than his own household and labourers, 
a class of people whom it is most natural a-nd obvious to treat 
with kindness and familiarity. Yet the agricultural plebeians 
must have been ignorant, and were likely to inherit the violence 
and obstinacy by which ignorance is ever accompanied. They 
must have entertained too, a peculiar jealousy of the great nobility, 
by whom their own rank in society had been in so many in- 
stances overwhelmed ; and when they came to the comitia in the 
city, they were incapable of resisting the eloquence of popular 
orators, ever ready to encourage their angry feelings against 
the rich, to flatter their self-importance, and to persuade them 
that their interests were the same with the public good. Above 
all, the nature of mankind is such, that even the best and most 
highly educated individuals, when assembled together in a nu- 
merous body, are apt to be more swayed by passion and less by 
principle, than if they were deliberating alone, or in a small so- 
ciety. Much more is this the case, when the inhabitants of a 



46 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

great city are promiscuously crowded together ; for then the 
evil predominates with a fearful ascendency, and a physical and 
moral excitement is created, which destroys the exercise of the 
judgment, and drowns the voice of moderation and self-restraint ; 
leaving the mind open to any unreasonable impression that may 
be produced, whether of ridicule, of indignation, of compassion, 
or of pride. 

It results then, from this view of the state of the plebeians, 
that the popular party in the times of Tiberius Gracchus was 
made up of very heterogeneous elements ; that one division of it, 
the mere city populace, was thoroughly worthless, but that others 
were composed of industrious and often well meaning men, 
whose great misfortune was to have a power placed in their 
hands collectively, far more than proportioned to their knowledge. 
On the otherhand,the aristocratical party consisted of materials not 
less discordant. Among those who had engrossed the landed es- 
tates of Italy, there were many who in the command of armies, 
or in the government of provinces, had given the utmost proofs 
of cruelty and rapacity, and who displayed the same temper to 
their poorer countrymen at home. Others again, sought merely 
to gratify the pride of nobility by the enjoyment of a large for- 
tune and influence : these were men whose selfishness was pas- 
sive, so long as it was indulged to the utmost, but \vho could 
behave with the most unscrupulous cruelty towards any who 
should attempt to restrain it. A third class consisted of those 
whose minds were loftier, and whose ambition was of a nobler 
character : men who delighted in conducting the councils or 
heading the armies of the state ; who wished to promote the 
greatness of their country, perhaps without being conscious to 
themselves how far a love of their own individual greatness min- 
gled in the wish ; and who felt the besetting vice of great abili- 
ties, contempt for the ordinary race of mankind. Such persons, 
like the magnanimous man of Aristotle's philosophy, having 
done the state great service, thought it just that their station in 
it should be pre-eminent ; and scorned the thought of admitting 
the lower classes of the people to a participation in their grandeur 
as an outrage on the majesty of Rome. So complicated are the 
motives by which we are actuated, and so hard is it where our 
own welfare coincides with what we deem the public good, to de- 
cide how much of a selfish bias determines us in forming our 
opinion. There yet remained a fourth description of supporters 
of the aristocracy, in those who by their own merit had raised 
themselves to a fair and honourable aflluence ; those who had 
inherited, or acquired by commerce, a respectable but not an 
overgrown fortune ; those who, content with little, had obtained 
consideration by their eloquence, their military services, or their 
tried integrity ; and those of the nobility themselves, who though 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 



47 



poor, were without co^etousness, and were more aristocratical 
from the influence of birth and connexions, than inclined to take 
the popular side from their poverty. Amongst this last class 
were numbered the majority of the equestrian order, and some 
of the most eminent individuals in Roman history ; Scipio ^Emi- 
lianus, in the times of the Gracchi, and at a later period M. Ci- 
cero and M, Cato. 

Many years had now passed since Rome had been disturbed by 
civil dissensions. We are told, indeed, that when the senate, 
immediately on the conclusion of the second Punic war, propos- 
ed to begin a fresh contest with the king of Macedon, the people 
were strongly disinclined to the measure,^ and complained that 
the nobility sought to involve the nation in perpetual hostilities, 
for the gratification of their own ambition. But when the seat 
of war was removed far away from Italy, and an uninterrupted 
succession of conquests flattered at once the national vanity, and 
often enriched the soldiers by the plunder which it threw into 
their hands, the popular aversion to war probably subsided. It 
was likely to be changed into fondness for it, from the period that 
the acquisition of the revenues of Macedon, added to the large in- 
come derived from other provinces, relived the citizens of Rome 
from taxation altogether. Those changes, indeed, in the state of 
property, which were afterwards to occasion such fatal quarrels, 
were in the meanwhile silently being effected ; but they were not 
yet so great as to call off the public attention from subjects of 
more immediate interest ; and it lias ever been the case, that the 
gradual approach of financial troubles has been unheeded, till the 
moment when the clouds have covered the whole face of the sky, 
and the storm has burst in thunder. 

It has already been mentioned when speaking of the war 
with Numantia, that C, Mancinus, one of the consuls employed 
in that service, was obliged to purchase the safety of his army by 
an unfavourable treaty ; that the senate violated the agreement thus 
made, and ordered the general who had concluded it to be de- 
livered up to the enemy, as if the perfidy of the government could 
be so atoned for. The officer who had been particularly employ- 
ed in drawing up this obnoxious treaty, was the consul's queestor,^ 
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus ; and it was said that the Nu- 
mantines were chiefly induced to treat, from their respect to his 
name ; his father having served in Spain, and by his honourable 
conduct having won the esteem and regard of the natives. When 
then the senate resolved to surrender to the Numantines not only 
the consul but all his principal officers, the popular assembly 
interfered ; and considering that Gracchus had done no more than 
save the lives of many thousand citizens, when the consul's mis- 

2 Livy, XXXI. 6. 3 piutarch, Vita Tib. Gracchi, 5. 



48 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

conduct had exposed them to destruction, it determined that all 
the other officers should be exempted, and that Mancinus should 
be given up alone. The different treatment which Gracchus on 
this occasion received from the senate and from the people, is said 
to have predisposed him to thwart the one, and to enlist on the 
side of the other. About three years afterwards, in the year of 
Rome 621, he was elected one of the tribunes of the people. 

The great accumulation of slaves in Italy, and the consequent 
dearth of free labourers, was now become a serious evil. Grac- 
chus had been struck with it, we are told, as he passed through 
Tuscany, on his way home from Spain ; observing, that the 
visible population consisted for the most part of foreign slaves, 
who were working in fetters under their task-masters. The 
dangers of this system had been also made manifest, by an insur- 
rection which had lately broken out among the slaves in Sicily ; 
for the immense estates possessed in that island by Roman or 
Latin citizens,* were, like those in Italy, cultivated entirely by 
slaves, whose numbers became so formidable, that being roused 
to arms by one of their body, they maintained a long and bloody 
war with the Roman government, spread devastation over the 
whole island, and defeated no fewer than four Roman prastors, 
who were sent against them. Pkitarch tells us besides, that 
Gracchus being known as a young man of enterprise and ability, 
was called upon in many addresses written upon the walls in 
different parts of the city, to stand up in the cause of the poor, 
and to recover for them the public lands which the rich had 
monopolized. 

Thus instigated at once by the pressing evils of the existing 
system, by personal predilections, and by the allurements of an 
evident popularity, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his unfortunate 
career. The remedy which he proposed for the growing distresses 
of the poor, consisted in a revival of the Licinian law, with cer- 
tain modifications ; that is to say,^ he allowed a father of a family 
to hold 500 jugera of public or conquered land in his own right, 
and 250 more in right of each of his sons ; but any man Avho 
possessed more than this amount, was to restore it to the nation 
on receiving a price for it from the treasury. To this proposition 
was added, that the lands thus recovered, should be divided 
among the poorer citizens, and that it should be unlawful at any 
time that any of these allotments should be sold : and finally, in 
order to provide for the execution of the law, three commissioners 
were to be appointed annually, with powers to see it duly carried 
into effect, and its enactments observed unbroken. It is said by 
Plutarch, that in proposing these measures, Gracchus acted with 

* Florus, III. 19. 5 Plutarch, Vita Grncchi, 9. Appian, 

de Bell. Civil. I. 9, 10. 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 49 

the concurrence of some individuals of distinguished rank, and 
of great legal knowledge ; such as P. Crassus, then Pontifex 
Maximus, and P. Mucius Scsevola, one of the consuls ; both of 
whom are often mentioned by Cicero® as eminent for their ac- 
quaintance with the civil law, as well as for their general elo- 
quence and ability. If this be true, it is a proof that the mis- 
chievous tendency of an agrarian law was not so palpable to 
the Romans as it is to us, and the apparent extravagance of 
Gracchus's conduct is much lessened. Indeed, we should remem- 
ber, that he only professed to enforce, even in mitigated severity, 
an actually existing law ; and that though time had seemed to 
sanction the encroachments of the rich, he might yet not unnatu- 
rally think that the people could never lose their rights by mere 
disuse ; and that his proposed indulgences to the holders of 
national property, abundantly compensated for any wrong they 
might sustain by the sudden revival of a long dormant claim. 
It is not possible that we, with the added experience and know- 
ledge of more than nineteen centuries, can hesitate to condemn 
his scheme as pernicious and impracticable ; nor, indeed, did it 
appear otherwise to calm and sensible men at that very time ; for 
C. Laelius, known by the name of the Wise, endeavoured in his 
tribuneship, a few years bejbre, to remedy the evils arising from 
the accumulation of estates ; but finding that they could not be 
removed without greater mischief, he abandoned The attempt alto- 
gether. JBut still, although the conduct of Gracchus was violent 
and unwise, it does not imply^in him such a degree of profligacy 
or folly, as would be justly imputed to a similar proposal now. 

The aristocracy -in general warmly opposed the projected law ^ 
and Gracchus, impatient of any opposition to a scheme which he 
deemed so beneficial, at once lost' his ternper ; and dropping the 
more conciliatory clauses, proposed merely that the holders of na- 
tional lands beyond the legal amount, should be obliged to give 
them up immediately.'' ' ^This only added to the .vehemence of the y 
opposition against it ; and the question being one of such universal 
interest, great crowds of people flocked to Rome fro^ all quarters 
of Italy, to take part with the friends or enemies of the law.^ But 
the aristocratical party, well knowing how the tribes were likely 
\o vote if it were left tp their decision, had secured the negative of i 
M. Octavius, one of the tribunes : and this being resolutely inte|r-^ 
posed, whenever the measure was brought forward, it was.impos- 
sible^for Gracchus, according to the forms of the constitu^on, to 
caryy his point. He too, however^ ^vailed himself of his power 
as tribune to embarrass his opponents ; for he suspended by his 
negative the functions of every officer in the state,' and sealed up 

6 De Claris Orator. 26. De Oratore, I. « Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 10. 
50. 56. De Officiis, II. I3. 9 Plutarch, Vita Gracchi, 10. 

T Plutarch, Vita Gracchi, 10. 



50 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

the doors of the treasury, thus stopping all issues or receipts of 
money for the public service. So strange was the extent of the 
tribunitian authority, that Gracchus in these violent proceedings 
was acting agreeably to law ; and the nobility, unable to resist 
him, went into mourning, to show their sense of the distress and 
dangerous state of the republic. 

Still, while Octavius persisted in his opposition, the law could 
not be carried.'" Gracchus, therefore, resolving to overbear every 
obstacle, and having endeavoured to win over his colleague by 
entreaty, as he was personally well known to him, and by the 
utmost efforts of his eloquence, at last finding him immoveable, 
openly declared, that two men so opposed to one another ought 
not to continue in office together ; that either Octavius or himself 
ought therefore to be forced by the people to lay down the tribune- 
ship. And with a mockery of fairness, he desired Octavius first 
to submit to the comitia the question, that Tiberius Gracchus 
should be no longer tribune. When this was dechned, he an- 
nounced his own intention of proposing a similar resolution on 
the following day with regard to Octavius. Accordingly, when 
the assembly met, Gracchus, after another personal appeal to his 
colleague, entreating him to yield to the wishes of the people, and 
finding him still resolute in his refusal, proposed to the tribes the 
sentence of degradation. Seventeen successively voted for it, and 
as "the total number of the tribes was thirty-five, the votes of one 
more would constitute a majority. At this point, then, Gracchus 
paused and once more conjured Octavius to spare him the neces- 
sity of proceeding to such a painful extremity. Octavius, it is 
said, was staggered ; but the sight of the nobility, who anxiously 
watched his behaviour, and the shame of being intimidated by 
personal considerations, gave him fresh firmness, and he told 
Gracchus to do whatever he thought proper. The eighteenth 
tribe then gave their votes for his degradation, and the measure 
being carried, Gracchus sent one of his ofiicers to drag Octavius 
down from the seat which he occupied as tribune. When this 
had been done, and Octavius had been thrust out among the 
people, the mob immediately fell upon him, and although Gracchus 
tried to check them, he found that a demagogue has little power 
in restraining his followers from violence, and Octavins with dif- 
ficulty escaped from their fury by the eftbrts of the nobility and 
the zeal of his own slaves, one of whom lost his eyes in defend- 
ing his master. 

After such an example, no tribune ventured any more to 
impede the progress of the law, which was passed inmiediately 
without difficulty. But it appears that Crassus and Mucins were 
either disgusted at the late conduct of Gracchus, or that he began 

10 riutaich, Vita Gracchi, 11, 12. Appian, 12. 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 51 

now to throw himself entirely into the arms of the common 
people, for neither their names, nor those of any other dis- 
tinguished senator unconnected with the tribune, were to be 
found among the commissioners appointed to carry the law into 
effect. The list consisted of Gracchus himself," of his younger 
brother Caius, a youth of only twenty years of age, and at this 
time serving under Scipio in Spain, and of his father-in-law, Ap- 
pius Claudius. It was evident that the real power of the commis- 
sion would rest solely with Tiberius Gracchus, and this circum- 
stance was likely to embitter still more the feelings of the senate 
towards him. Their hatred betrayed itself in a manner at once 
impolitic and mean, for they refused him the usual allowance 
granted to a public commissioner, '^ and reduced it to a denarius 
and a half, or about one shilling a day. Both parties were full 
of suspicion against each other ; a friend of Tiberius happening 
to die suddenly, the appearance exhibited by his body was attri- 
buted to the effects of poison, and Tiberius himself, as if afraid 
for his own life, put on mourning, and with his young children 
in his hand, went round among the people, recommending his 
family to their protection, in case he himself should fall a victim 
to his enemies. On the other hand, Gracchus began to incur 
the imputation which had proved so often fatal to former dema- 
gogues, that of aspiring to make himself tyrant of Rome.'^ 
Attains, the last king of Pergamus, was lately dead, and one of 
his ministers had arrived in Rome with his will, by which he 
bequeathed his dominions and treasure to the Roman people. 
Gracchus immediately proposed a law, that the treasure should 
be divided among those citizens who should receive allotments of 
land under the new commission, in order to enable them to stock 
their farms, and that the disposal and management of the kingdom 
should be lodged exclusively with the popular assembly. Undei 
the odium which such conduct excited, any accusation against 
him was readily listened to ; and a senator, whose house was 
next to that of Gracchus, stood up in the senate, and asserted on 
his own knowledge, that the minister of the late king of Pergamus 
had presented Gracchus with a diadem and a scarlet robe, pre- 
paratory, as he insinuated, to his usurping the regal state of which 
those decorations were the insignia. 

But his conduct towards Octavius afforded his enemies a surer 
ground of censure. Even many of the people, it is said, were 
struck with the unprecedented violence of that measure : and 
Gracchus thought proper to justify himself at some length, and 
endeavoured to show that the sacredness of the tribunitian office 
was destroyed, when a tribune turned his power to the injury of 

" Appian and Plutarch, ubi supra. Vel- 12 Plutarch, Vita Gracchi, 13. 
leius Paterculus, II. 2. i3 Plutarch, 14. 



52 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

that part of the people whose interests he was especially appointed 
to guard. What effect his arguments produced on the minds of 
his hearers cannot be known ; but in the judgment of posterity 
his conduct has appeared indefensible. The negative of the tri- 
bunes was their peculiar and constitutional privilege, and it had 
often been exerted in defence of individuals against popular 
violence, as well as in behalf of the interests of the commons 
collectively against the encroachments of the aristocracy. To set 
it aside whenever it opposed the inclinations of a majority of the 
comitia, and far more to degrade the tribune who interposed it, 
was a direct injury to the personal liberty of every citizen, and 
left him absolutely without defence against the wildest tyranny 
which the popular assembly might be excited by its orators to 
commit. It was a violation of the letter of the constitution, not on 
the plea of necessity, but merely of expediency ; and it furnished 
a pretence for the more flagrant violation of it, of which the op- 
posite party, in their turn, were soon proceeding to be guilty. 
Meanwhile the crowds who had flocked to Rome, during the 
discussion of the agrarian law, had left the city and returned to 
their homes, elated with their triumph.'* It was possible that 
Gracchus might not always be able to command a majority in 
the comitia, and in that case he had the prospect before his eyes 
of impeachment, condemnation, and exile. He resolved, therefore, 
to avail himself of his present popularity, for the purpose of being 
re-elected tribune for the following year, and he trusted that his 
supporters from the country would re-assemble on such an occa- 
sion, and would secure his election. To win still more the favour 
of the multitude, he allured them with the hope of a number of 
popular measures which he proposed to carry in his next tribune- 
ship : the term of military service,'^ to which every citizen was 
bound by law, was to be shortened ; the judicial power in ordinary 
criminal causes, which had hitherto been confined to senators, was 
to be shared with the equestrian order; and Paterculus adds,'® 
that he promised to procure the freedom of Rome for all the in- 
habitants of Italy. These were indeed the proceedings of a dan- 
gerous demagogue ; but it is impossible to decide whether Grac- 
chus desired a second tribuneship as a defensive or an offensive 
measure : whether he wished it only as a protection for himself, 
or whether he meditated plans still more subversive of all good 
government than those which he had already avowed. But fear 
has been justly numbered among the causes which led them into 

!■* Appian, 13. and no one mentions any of these meas- 

15 Plutarch, 16, seems to speak of these ures among the actual offrtnces of Tiberius, 

laws as actually proposed by Tiberius I have thought it most probable that they 

Gracchus ; but as the one which regards were only talited of by him, and were 

the judicial power is ascribed both by Pa- never carried into eiFect. 

terculus and Appian to his brother Caius, '^ Velleius Paterculus, ubi supra. 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 



53 



injustice ; and acts which he might have deemed necessary to 
his own safety, might have been of a nature no less violent than 
such as the most deliberate treason against his country would 
have dictated. 

The season of election was now approaching/* and the friends 
of the aristocracy insisted that the same person could not legally 
be appointed tribune two years successively. Accordingly, on 
the day of election, a demur on this point was made by the tri- 
bune who presided at the comitia, and who accepted or refused 
the votes of the citizens. He was requested to resign his office to 
Mucius or Mummius, a warm partisan of Gracchus, and the man 
who had been lately elected to fill the place of Octavius. But 
the other tribunes objected to this arrangement, and a dispute en- 
suing, the friends of Gracchus perceived that the result was like- 
ly to be unfavourable to them, and contrived to protract the dis- 
cussion to so late an hour, that the assembly was obliged to be 
adjourned to the following day. During the remainder of the 
afternoon and evening, Gracchus again went about in mourning 
with his children, appealing to the compassion of the people ; and 
so strong a sentiment was excited in his behalf, that a great 
crowd watched through the night around his house, in order to 
secure him from the violence which he affected to dread. He 
himself meanwhile was concerting with his friends the measures 
to be pursued on the morrow ; and a signal was agreed upon 
amongst them,'^ to be used in case it should be necessary for 
them to employ force. The capitol was occupied by his party 
while it was yet dark, and in the morning he left his house to 
join them, and was received with the loudest acclamations ; a 
crowd of his friends ranging themselves around his person, in or- 
der that no one on whom they could not depend might approach 
too near him. 

From this point the relations of Plutarch aud Appian vary ; 
nor have we any contemporary account which might teach us 
how to reconcile them with each other, or assist us in judging 
which of the two we ought to follow. We shall attempt to com- 
pose such a statement as may be probable in itself, and not in- 
consistent with either of our authorities. At the first outset, the 
tribunes who were opposed to Gracchus,'* and the partisans of 
the nobility, endeavoured to interrupt the election, on the ground 
which had been urged on the preceding day, that a tribune could 
not be re-elected for the following year. A disturbance thus arose 
among the multitude,^" and at the same moment Fulvius Flaccus, 
a senator attached to the popular party, arrived in haste from the 
senate, and making signs that he wished to speak to Gracchus, 

" Plutarch and Appian, ubi supra, " Plutarch and Appian. 

18 Appian, 15. » Plutarch, 18. 



54 BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 

obtained a passage through the crowd. He brought information 
that the nobility, being unable to procure the sanction of the con- 
sul, were preparing of themselves to attack the comitia, and had 
armed for this purpose a considerable body of their friends and of 
their slaves. The popular faction, already in a high state of agi- 
tation, were roused to the utmost by these tidings. They tucked 
up their gowns to prepare for action, seized the staves from the 
hands of the ordinary otficers who kept order in the comitia, broke 
them, and distributed the fragments among their own party, and 
when Gracchus gave the concerted signal^' by raising his hand 
to his head, they at once fell upon the tribunes who had opposed 
them, and on the rest of the supporters of the senate, and drove 
them from the place of assembly. All now became tumult ; the 
priests of Jupiter shut the gates of the temple in the capitol, and 
a thousand vague and exaggerated rumours were carried to the 
senate; some saying that Gracchus was deposing the other tri- 
bunes from their office ; others that he was nominating himself to 
a second tribuneship, without waiting for the votes of the people ; 
while a third set, who had from a distance seen him raise his 
hand to his head, affirmed that he w^as instantly to be appointed 
king, and that he had actually signified his desire to receive from 
the people a crown. 

These several reports reached the senators who were assem- 
bled in the temple of Faith. P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, a man 
of the highest nobility, of great landed property, and of a stern 
and determined temper,^*^ called upon P. Mucins, the consul, to 
take instant and vigorous measures for the destruction of the ty- 
rant. To this Mucins answered, that he would not set the exam- 
ple of shedding blood, nor destroy any citizen without trial ; but 
if the people were seduced or terrified by Gracchus into any ille- 
gal resolutions, he should consider such resolutions to be of no 
authority. Nasica then exclaimed, " The consul deserts the repub- 
lic ; let those who wish to preserve it follow me." At once the sen- 
ators arose, wrapped their gowns around their left arms as a shield, 
and proceeded in a body towards the capitol. Nasica led them, 
with a fold of his robe thrown over his head ; and the train was 
swelled by the friends and slaves of the senators, who had provided 
themselves beforehand with clubs and sticks. On the approach 
of this band, consisting of all the nobility of Rome, the people 
made way before them, and fled in all directions. The senators 
seized the staves which their opponents dropped in their flight, or 
armed themselves with the fragments of the benches which had 
been broken down in the confusion of the crowd. With these 
weapons they attacked all who fell in their way ; and Gracchus 

2> Appian, 15. 22 Cicero, de Officiis, I. 30. De Clnris 

Orator. 28. 



BIOGRAPHY— TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 



55 



himself endeavouring to escape, and stumbling over those who had 
already fallen, was killed by repeated blows on the head. About 
three hundred of his friends shared his fate, being all killed by 
clubs or bludgeons, which were the only weapons employed. The 
bodies of all the slain, including Gracchus himself, were ordered 
to be thrown into the Tiber, and the senate following up their 
victory, put to death afterwards several of the partisans of the 
late tribune ; some of them, it is said,^^ with circumstances of 
atrocious cruelty. 

It throws a remarkable light on the notions entertained by the 
Romans on political justice, that Cicero, a man whose moral prin- 
ciples were far purer than those of his countrymen in general, 
speaks more than once of the murder of Gracchus in terms of the 
warmest praise.^* So accustomed were the Romans to have re- 
course to the plea of necessity or public utility, to justify the vio- 
lation of the existing laws of the commonwealth. Now, as it is 
obvious that these abstract principles are of a far more pliable 
nature than written forms of law can be, all parties in turn might 
appeal to such an excuse, with plausibility, when the laws, if 
duly observed, would have passed on each a just condemnation. 
No doubt there is an extreme on the other side ; and a blind de- 
votion to the letter and forms of the constitution on all occasions, 
may really compromise those great interests for the sake of which 
alone forms are valuable. But there cannot be a question that 
the adherence to rules, and the respect for particular institutions, 
which remarkably distinguish our English lawyers, are a most 
valuable security to personal liberty, and that they serve to sub- 
ject the fury of contending factions to one impartial and unim- 
passioned decision. At Rome, public expediency was success- 
fully appealed to, to justify the degradation of Octavius and the 
death of Gracchus ; whereas a truer knowledge of the interests of 
justice and liberty would have taught them to abhor both those 
actions as illegal and tyrannical : the last, as is usual in cases of 
retaliation, far exceeding the former by which it was provoked, in 
violence and atrocity. 

23 Plutarch, Vita Tib. Gracch. 20. - — - 2* De Officiis, I. 22. 30. 



CHAPTER III. 

CAIUS GRACCHUS.— FROM U.C. 621, B.C. 133, TO U.C. 633, B.C. 121. 

The murder of Tiberius Gracchus was so much a sudden and 
Biography-caiua isolatcd act, that it did not at all interrupt the 
From u"c. 621. B c. executiou of those laws which he had proposed 
cf'm. ^' ^' *°^' ^' and carried in his tribuneship. His death occasion- 
ed a vacancy among the commissioners for carrying into effect 
his agrarian law ; and P. Licinius Crassus/ who was nominated 
to succeed him, perishing shortly after in the war against Aristo- 
nicus," in Pergamus ; and Appius Claudius,' another of the origi- 
nal commissioners, dying also about the same time, the commis- 
sion finally was composed of C. Gracchus, the younger brother 
of Tiberius, C. Papirius Carbo, and M. Fulvius Flaccus. But the 
extreme youth of C. Gracchus, and possibly the impression pro- 
duced on his mind by the fate of his brother, prevented him from 
immediately taking an active part in public affairs. His col- 
leagues, however, were well disposed to make up for his absence ; 
and they proceeded to fulfil the duties of their appointment in 
that summary and absolute manner which was so familiar to the 
magistrates of Rome. They readily received accusations against 
any persons who were charged with holding national lands ;* 
and decided on all these cases by their own sole authority. It 
often happened that property alleged to be public, was intermixed 
with estates lawfully belonging to the inhabitants of the allied 
states of Italy ; and now the present commission extended its 
inquiries to the titles by which these estates were held ; and their 
owners were called upon to show how they had acquired them, 
and to produce either the deeds of the purchase, or the grants by 
which they had received them from the Roman government. 
Sometimes these documents were not to be found ; and then the 
commissioners decided at their discretion upon the property of the 
land ; and removed at pleasure from their estates men who had 
peaceably inherited them from a remote period. It appears, also, 
that for the encouragement of agriculture, permission had been 

1 Plutarch, in Tib. Gracch. 21. ^ Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 18. 

« Livy, Epitom. LIX. * Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 18. 



OPPOSITION TO THE AGRARIAN COMMISSIONERS. 55 

given to individuals on former occasions, to inclose and cultivate 
the waste lands in their neighbourhood, on the payment probably 
of a rent, scarcely more than nominal, to the treasury. In pro- 
cess of time, the distinction between the freehold and rented 
parts of an estate was forgotten ; the boundaries between the 
two were removed ; and the whole Avas looked upon as held by 
the same tenure. But no prescription was any security against 
the new commissioners ; all public land whatever was to be re- 
covered out of private hands, and to be divided amongst the 
poorer citizens, according to the provisions of the Sempronian 
law. Nor was the distribution of the lots to be thus assigned 
less arbitrary.' The law allowed an individual to hold 500 ju- 
gera of national property ; but it seems that the commissioners 
might allot them to him in whatever part of Italy they thought 
proper. Many persons, therefore, were deprived of the lands 
which they held adjoining to their own estates ; and received in ex- 
change an allotment often less valuable in itself, and generally far 
less conveniently situated. Men obnoxious to the commissioners, 
either on political or personal grounds, were thus subjected to 
numberless vexations ; while their partisans, their creatures, and 
their friends, might be most unduly favoured. It is probable, in- 
deed, that the most industrious and peaceable among the poorer 
citizens, would be by no means the greatest gainers from the dis- 
tribution of land ;^ but that the opportunity would be seized to re- 
ward the most violent supporters of the democratical party in the 
popular assembly, and to encourage the riotous and seditious for 
the future, with the hope of earning for themselves a similar 
prize, by an active and unscrupulous obedience to the prevailing 
demagogues of the day. 

It strongly marks the character of the Roman constitution, 
that at the very time Vvrhen a commission so favourable to the 
wildest claims of the democratical party was actually in existence, 
the consuls,'^ P. Popilius and P. Rupilius, were proceeding to in- 
flict the penalty of banishment on several of the partisans of Ti- 
berius Gracchus, by no other authority than a vote of the senate,, 
and in manifest contempt of the Valerian law. This, as was 
natural, was on a future occasion strongly resented by the popu- 
lar party ; and thus in the tyrannical powers which both sides in 
turn allowed themselves to exercise, there never were wanting to 
either pretences of retaliation, whenever they could gain the as- 
cendency. 

Meantime, the proceedings of the agrarian commissioners ex- 
cited a general indignation amongst the inhabitants p. scipio opposes the 

^,, '-'. ('T, i« j?i iJT_ commissioners of the 

of the provinces 01 Italy, many 01 whom had been agrarian law. 

5 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 18. "^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 7. Plutarch, 

5 Coiif. Cicero, de Lege Agraria contra in C. Gracch. 4. 
RuUum ; Orat. II. 29. 31. 8 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 19. 

5 



56 



DEATH OF P. SCIPIO. 



dispossessed of estates to make room for some of the poor citizens 
of Rome. In looking out for a man who might espouse their 
cause with effect, they were led to fix their eyes on P. Cornelius 
Scipio ^milianus, who was distinguished for his military ser- 
vices, and had lately returned to Rome, after having effected the 
destruction of Numantia. Scipio had become acquainted with 
many of the Italians, when serving under him as allies in the 
Roman army, and was well able to appreciate their value ; he was 
inclined also of himself to oppose the popular party ; and he came 
forward therefore with complaints of the excessive power vested 
in the hands of the commissioners, and proposed that all points in 
dispute between them and the occupiers of land should be decid- 
ed, not by themselves, but by a more impartial jurisdiction. This 
seemed so fair, that it was acceded to ; and C. Sempronius Tudi- 
tanus, one of the consuls, was appointed judge of all appeals 
against the measures of the commissioners. But this officer, dis- 
gusted with the difficulties of the office, soon resigned it, and 
departed to his province of Illyricum ; whilst, as no one acted in 
his place, the commissioners again were enabled to defy all oppo- 
sition. The attempt, however, to lessen their power had ren- 
dered Scipio odious to their party ; nor was this the only way in 
which he offended them ; for he had on a former occasion procured 
the rejection of a law brought forward by Carbo,' and supported 
by Gracchus, to allow the same person to be re- 
u.c. 623. u. c. 624. gjg^^g^j trlbuue as often as the people should choose. 
He did not abate in his opposition to their power as commission- 
ers, till, on the night prececling the day on which he was going 
to address the people fully on the subject, he died suddenly in his 
bed :'" and his death was attributed by the violence 
Dea o p SCIPIO. ^^ party to the contrivances of Carbo and Gracchus. 
But the general, and the most probable account was, that his 
death was natural ;" nor, indeed, is secret assassination a crime 
consistent with that which we know of the character of the Ro- 
man political quarrels at this period of the republic. 

The agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus, which had arisen 
immediately out of the relative situation of the rich and poor citi- 
zens of Rome, began now in its operation to affect other interests, 
and to bring forward new claims, and new changes. It has been 
mentioned, that the landholders among the allied states of Italy, 
felt themselves particularly aggrieved by it, and that they had 
applied to Scipio to undertake the defence of their cause. After 
his death they continued their opposition to it,"^ in conjunction 
with the aristocratical party at Rome ; and thus the execution of 

9 Livy.Epitom. LIX. Cicero, de Ami- ii Vid. Paterculus. 

cit. 25. 12 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 21. 

10 Appian, 20. Velleius Paterculus, II. 
4. Livy, Epitom. LIX. 



SCHEME TO CONCILIATE ITALIAN ALLIES. 57 

the law was delayed and impeded, and its supporters might have 
despaired of ever carrying it into full effect, while there were such 
powerful interests arrayed against it. Upon this a scheme was 
devised, which should at once conciliate one part The popular leaders 

f ,j J c .T 1 T,,i • conciliate Italian al- 

01 the opponents 01 the laws, and set them at van- iies by the hope of 
ance with the other part. Hopes were held out to of Roman citizfns.^ 
the Italian allies, that they should be admitted to all the privileges 
of Roman citizens ; and in return for so splendid a gift, it was ex- 
pected that they would renounce their opposition to the agrarian 
law. Besides, the popular leaders might probably calculate on 
making the strength of their party irresistible, if so many thou- 
sand members, indebted to them for their right of voting, should 
be added to the popular assembly ; and as the number of citizens 
would then be so great, that the actual meeting of the whole peo- 
ple in one place would be impracticable : the comitia were liltgly 
to consist of an assemblage of the idlest and most worthless of the 
community ; to be more than ever incapable of reason, and more 
than ever liable to become instruments of mischief in the hands 
of their favourite orators. However, the proposed grant of citi- 
zenship completely answered the views of the popular leaders : 
the Italians, forgetting the agrarian law in the seducing prospect 
now opened to them, crowded to Rome to witness the decision 
of the question, and to influence it in their favour by every 
means in their power. While, on the other hand, the senate, 
considering this new measure as more dangerous than even the 
division of the national lands, prepared vigorously to oppose it ; 
and M, Junius Pemius,'^ one of the tribunes, brought forward a 
law under their authority, commanding all aliens to depart fi'om 
Rome, and prohibiting them generally from access to it. The 
law was carried, and the success of the senate in The scheme defeated 
this previous struggle deterred, as it seems, the by the senate. 
popular leaders from bringing on the main question for the pre- 
sent. At this time, also, they lost one of their 
number, C. Gracchus, who having been elected 
quaestor, was sent into Sardinia with L. Aurelius Orestes,'^ one of 
the consuls, to quell some disturbances in that island. 

In the succeeding year, M. Fulvius Flaccus, one of the com- 
missioners of the agrarian law, was elected consul ; and availing 
himself of the power of his office, he threatened to bring the ques- 
tion concerning the Italian allies to an issue. The Renewed nnsuccess- 
senate conjured him, it is said,'^ to desist from his fLccuJ. 
purpose ; and finding that he treated them with contempt, they 
averted the evil for the time by sending Fulvius on foreign ser- 
vice;'^ availing themselves of the opportunity afforded by the 

13 Vid. Ciceron. de Claris Orator. 28. is Valerius Maxiraus, IX. 5. 
De Officiis, III. 11. is Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 34. Livy, 

" Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 1. Epitom. LX. 



5g SKETCH OF THE AUTHORITIES 

Salyes, a tribe of Transalpine Gaul, who had attacked the do- 
minions of the city of Marseilles, an ally of the republic. But the 
hopes which his proposed measures had excited in the minds of 
the Italians could not be at once forgotten ; and some among them 
were disposed to assert their claims by force, without depending 
on their friends at Rome. The people of Fregellse are men- 
tioned as having revolted from the Romans ; and Cicero goes so far 
as to speak of the "war with Fregellas.'"^ But the war which 
a single city could maintain against the Roman empire could not 
have been very serious. Fregellse was betrayed by one of its 
citizens,'^ and the prsetor, L. Opimius, who was employed on this 
occasion, after having killed so many of the inhabitants as to 
encourage him to claim a triumph," received the submission of 
the survivors,^" and razed their city to the ground. 

It was late in the succeeding year, when C. Gracchus, after 

an absence of about two years, returned from Sar- 

First Tribuneship and (Jlnla wlthout thc pcrmissiou 01 his general, mtend- 

character oi u. urac- ^ r ^ ^ i /• 

chus. ing at the ensunig elections to oiier himseii as a 

candidate for the tribuneship.^' His conduct in thus leaving his 
province was complained of, and was noticed by the censors ; but 
he defended himself successfully both on this and on other occa- 
sions, when he was accused of having been concerned in the re- 
volt of Fregellse. He obtained also the office of tribune which he 
desired, but was so vigorously opposed by the senatorian party, 
that he could only obtain the fourth place in the list. He was 
now about thirty years of age, and possessed all the qualifications 
requisite in a popular leader. His eloquence was of a very high 
order,22 a,t once sensible and commanding ; his education^^ had 
begun early under the care of his mother Cornelia, and exceeded 
that of most of his contemporaries : his activity and diligence 
were great, and the fate of his brother, as Avell as the circumstan- 
ces of his early political life, marked him out as a determined 
enemy of the senate and partisan of the popular cause. 
Accordingly his tribuneship was marked by a succession of acts, 
all prompted evidently by party views, and which appear to have 
originated far less in honest feehngs of compassion for the suffer- 
ings of the poor, than the laws of his brother Tiberius. The 
truth is, that there were now two parties in the state more dis- 
tinctly formed ; and men under such circumstances are too apt 
to believe that the good of their country can only be promoted 
through the medium of the ascendency of their party. 

In the accounts Avhich we are now to give of the measures 
pursued by C. Gracchus, the want of a good contemporary his- 

iT De Lege Agraria, II. 33. 2i Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 2. 

18 Cicero, de Finibus, V. 22. 22 Cicero, de Claris Orator. 33. 58. 

19 Valerius Maximus, II. 8. ^'^ Cicero, de Claris Orator. 33. 58. 

20 Livy, Epitom. LX. 



FOR THIS PART OF ROMAN HISTORY. 59 

torian whom we may follow with confidence will sketch of the authori- 
be severely felt. And here it may not be improper, m1ifSstorT''°^^°" 
once for all, to acquaint the English reader with the nature of 
those materials fi'om which our knowledge of this part of Roman 
history is derived ; for this is not made sufficiently clear by the 
generality of modern compilers, and their narrative proceeds with 
as little hesitation as if they were copying from the fullest and 
most respectable authorities. The most detailed account of the 
times with which we are now engaged, is to be found in Plutarch's 
life of Caius Gracchus. Now from whom Plutarch chiefly copied 
he does not inform us ; and neither his knowledge of the Roman 
laws and forms, nor his general accuracy, nor even his object in 
writing, are such as to render him a valuable guide in stating the 
provisions of particular statutes with exactness, or the order in 
which they were proposed. Appian, who has written more briefly, 
is equally silent as to the authorities for his history, and quotes 
the enactments of the difierent laws too vaguely. It is to be ob- 
served, that he relates several facts in a difierent order from that 
followed by Plutarch. We should remember, then, that the 
writers whom we must chiefly consult were two foreigners, who 
lived more than two hundred years later than the period for which 
we refer to them, in whose times a totally new order of things 
had succeeded to the old government, and who appear to have 
had a very superficial knowledge of the laws and constitution of 
the republic. In addition to Plutarch and Appian, we have the 
sketch of Roman history drawn by Velleius Paterculus, in which 
the acts of Gracchus are enumerated all together without any 
detail of circumstances : we have the epitomes of the lost books 
of Livy, which are also a mere sketch, and compiled by an un- 
certain author, and we have the meagre outlines of the life of 
Gracchus given by Florus and Aurelius Victor. When these 
writers differ from one another, we know not to whose statements 
we ought most to listen, unless the point be determined acciden- 
tally by some allusion to it in an earlier writer : or unless we 
venture to decide by internal probability. The voluminous works 
of Cicero do indeed often throw light on the affairs of the times 
preceding his own ; and his legal and constitutional knowledge 
make his authority highly valuable. But it is easy to understand 
how very insufficient such scattered fragments of information 
must be towards giving a full and connected history of any 
transaction. We proceed then, but with hesitation and doubt, 
to offer the best account in our power of a period which well 
deserves to have been commemorated by able and more careful 
historians. 

According to Plutarch, C. Gracchus commenced his career as 
tribune by inflammatory addresses to the people, in u. c. eso. 
which he bewailed continually the fate of his brother, Lejea sempronis."^ 



QQ CORN LAW. 

and painted the iniquity of his murder. He then brought forward 
two laws, tlie one to disquahfy any magistrate who had been de- 
prived of his office by the people from being afterwards appointed 
to any other post of authority ; the other making it a crime 
cognizable by the popular assembly, if any magistrate banished 
a Roman citizen without trial. The former of these was merely 
a fresh mark of the hatred of the popular leaders towards M. 
Octavius, who had been degraded from the tribuneship, as has 
been already mentioned, for his opposition to the agrarian law 
when first proposed by Tiberius Gracchus ; and the unworthy 
feelings in which the measure originated were so evident, that C. 
Gracchus himself was persuaded by his mother to procure its 
rejection. The second law was particularly directed against P. 
Popilius, who. as we have seen, had during his consulship exer- 
cised the vengeance of the senate against several of the partisans 
of Tiberius Gracchus. Popilius, fearful of being brought to trial, 
withdrew from Rome ; and Gracchus then carried a law,'^^ by 
which he was forbidden the use of fire and water in Italy, the 
usual form of passing a sentence of banishment. After these 
preparatory acts, intended perhaps to intimidate the friends of the 
aristocracy, Gracchus brought forward such measures as, by 
gratifying the common people, were likely to bind them to support 
him in all his future proceedings. The agrarian law, passed during 
the tribuneship of his brother Tiberius, was again confirmed,"^ 
and some provisions were probably made to insure its execution. 
By another law it was ordered^^ that the soldiers should be pro- 
vided with clothing without deducting from their pay the money 
thus expended ; and that no one should enlist under seventeen 
years of age. A third enacted, that corn should be distributed 
Com law. Lexfru- mouthly to the people," at the price of five-sixths 
mentaria. of au as for the modius or peck: which would 

make the value of the quarter nearly one shilling and eightpence 
of our money. What quantity was thus to be given to every 
citizen, we have not been able to find ; but whether it were much or 
little, the injustice and impracticability of this Roman poor-law 
are equally striking ; for its operation would in the end liave fed 
the Roman people at the expense of the subject provinces, and by 
discouraging industry and encouraging population would have 
filled Rome with a mere multitude of idle paupers, incapable of 
government, and so completely worthless, that the rest of the 
world would not long have endured their dominion or their exist- 
ence. This law was warmly opposed by the aristocratical party, 
and amongst the rest by L. Calpurnius Piso,*^^ who had been 

21 Cicero pro DoiTiosu{i, 31. 27 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 21. Livy, 

25 Livy, Epitom. LX. Plutarch, in C. Epitom. LX. 
Grncfho, 5. 28 Cicero, Tusculan. Disputat. IIL 20. 

28 Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 5. 



LAW CONCERNING THE JUDICIAL POWER. Qi 

consul during the year in which Tiberius Gracchus was killed. 
It passed, however, in spite of their opposition, and soon after 
Piso was seen amongst the crowd of poor citizens, who came to 
receive their portion of corn. Gracchus observing him, charged 
him with inconsistency for taking the benefit of a law which he 
had so strongly opposed ; to which Piso replied, " I should very 
much object to your giving away my property amongst the people ; 
but if you were to do it, I should certainly try to get my share of 
it." In addition to all these acts, another was attempted to be 
passed to gratify the Italians,^^ by granting them the right of 
voting in the assemblies at Rome, but without communicating 
to them the other privileges of Roman citizenship. But the most 
formidable attack upon the senate still remained to be made : the 
judges who sat with the praetors for the ordinary Law concerning the 
trial of criminal causes, had hitherto consisted of j^J^iai power. 
senators alone ;^'' and in the strong party feeling which bound 
the members of the different orders of the republic to the support 
of each other, a senator when tried by senators was likely to meet 
with more favour than justice. This was particularly the case 
when officers of high rank were tried for corruption or misconduct 
in the provinces : and instances of partiality had lately occurred 
in the acquittal of L. Aurelius Gotta and Marcius Aquilius, the 
former of whom had been accused by P. Scipio ^milianus,'' and 
had been brought before the court eight successive times ; and the 
latter may be well judged capable of any crime, since he has been 
already mentioned as guilty of poisoning the wells, when engaged 
in the war against Aristonicus in Asia. The odium excited by 
these cases favoured the wishes of Gracchus, and he succeeded 
in introducing a most important change in the constitution, by 
transferring the judicial power from the senate to the equestrian 
order, either by ordering that the judges should henceforth be ap- 
pointed solely from the latter, or, as the account of Livy's Epito- 
mizer leads us to suppose, by providing, that for every senator 
among the judges there should be henceforth named in addition 
two equites or knights, thus giving a decided majority to their 
order. Plutarch here gives us an instance of his ignorance re- 
specting the simplest facts in the history of the Roman consti- 
tution. For he tells us, that whereas there were before three 
hundred judges, all senators, by the law of Gracchus three 
hundred from the equestrian orders were added to them, so that 
the influence of the two orders injudicial proceedings was hence- 
forward equaL He confounds the Sempronian law with the laws 
of Plotius and Lirius, which were passed on purpose to alter its pro- 

29 Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 5. Appian, 3i Cicero, Divinatio in Caecil. 21, Va- 
23. lerius Maximus, VIII. 1, 

3" Appian, 22. Velleius Paterculus, 

n. 6. 



g2 SECOND TRIBUNESHIP OP GRACCHUS. 

visions. Of ttie effects of this alteration it is difficult to judge : 
Appian asserts that the judges of the equestrian order soon became 
as corrupt as the senators, ^^ and were as unjustly severe towards 
all senators who were tried before them, as the former judges had 
been unduly partial. Whereas Cicero declares, ^^ that during the 
whole period of nearly fifty years in which the law of Gracchus 
continued in force, there had never arisen even the slightest sus- 
picion of any of the judges having received a bribe. It should 
be remembered, however, that this is said in the course of his 
pleadings as an advocate, and on such occasions the greatest 
allowance must be made for the wide deviations from truth con- 
tinually practised by the orators of both Greece and Rome. 

These popular acts raised Gracchus to a height of influence 
Gracch.s promotes aud Consideration among the people such as ren- 
many public works, ^ercd him aluiost absolute. To increase the num- 
ber of his dependents at the same time that he was throwing lus- 
tre upon his administration, he brought in several laws for making 
roads, ^* constructing bridges, erecting storehouses for the corn 
that was to be distributed among the people, and executing vari- 
ous other works of ornament and utiUty. As Gracchus, from his 
present popularity, enjoyed the power of appointing the persons 
who were to be employed in these undertakings, he was con- 
stantly surrounded by a crowd of contractors, artificers, engineers, 
pubUc officers, men of science, and workmen of various descrip- 
tions, all courting his patronage, soliciting his judgment on their 
several proposals, and ready to support him meanwhile in all his 
enterprises. The activity of his mind, and the versatility of his 
talents, enabled him to enter into the views of all ; the depth of 
a statesman's knowledge on scientific or common subjects is not 
very strictly scrutinized by those who are flattered with liis atten- 
tion in noticing them at all ; and thus Gracchus obtained the 
character of a man of universal information, who could at once 
understand and feel interested in those humbler pursuits, which 
persons in higher power and station are generally suspected of 
despising. 

The year was meanwhile drawing towards its close ; and the 
second tribuneship of ^^w, as It ]iow stood, prevented Gracchus from of- 
Gracchus. fering himself a second time as a candidate for the 

tribuneship. But it appears from Appian,^* that the force of this 
law was partly rendered null, by the people possessing the power 

32 Appian, I. 22. We have no doubt that Schweighaeuser in 

33 Cicero, in Verrem, actio prima, 13. his note on this passage has given the true 

34 Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 6. Appian, interpretation of it, which we have ex- 
I. 23. pressed in the text ; but at the same time, 

35 Appian, I. 21. The words are these, we are ignorant what law it is that Appian 
Tij n^ri voftoi KeKip(i}To,Ki Siiiiop^oi evSioirais olludes to,or at what period it was enacted. 
TrapayyeMais, rdv Jij^uJ' W ndvTcav tTriXtyto-Out. 



SECOND TRIBUNESHIP OP GRACCHUS. 53 

of an unlimited choice, in case fewer than ten candidates should 
offer themselves. It happened on the present occasion that the 
requisite number of candidates did not come forward ; the strong 
tide of popular feeling towards Gracchus deterring perhaps many 
from attempting to exclude him ; and thus he was again elected, 
although his own mother, in a letter still extantj^^ dissuaded him 
most forcibly from taking the office. His career u. c.esi. 

continued to be the same as before : he now moved that colonies 
of poor Roman citizens should be planted in several parts of 
Italy,^'^ and that the Latins should be admitted to all the civil 
rights of Roman citizenship. Finding it hopeless to oppose him 
in a direct manner, the senate engaged Livius Drusus, another of 
the tribunes, to bring in measures still more popular under the 
sanction of the aristocracy, hoping thus to rival the credit of Grac- 
chus, and to conciliate the affections of the multitude to them- 
selves. Drusus proposed to send out no fewer than twelve colo- 
nies, a number much exceeding that mentioned by Gracchus ; 
and the colonists were to be exempted from the rent usually paid 
by them to the treasury for the lands assigned to them.^^ This 
hberality, which Drusus ascribed entirely to the concern felt by 
the senate for the welfare of the common people, so far won the 
gratitude of the multitude, that he ventured boldly to interpose his 
negative on the other measure brought forward by Gracchus, re- 
specting the grant of citizenship to the Latins,^^ Besides, Drusus 
carefully avoided assigning to himself any office in the new colo- 
nies, and kept himself clear from any suspicion of desiring places 
of patronage or emolument ; thus offering his own conduct as a 
strong contrast to that of Gracchus, who had taken so large a 
part in the direction of all the public works executed in compli- 
ance with his laws. Thus the credit of Gracchus was somewhat 
lessened ; and to prevent him from regaining his influence by 
popular speeches, or by any new popular laws, the senate con- 
trived to procure his nomination as one of the commissioners for 
planting a colony in Africa, near the site of Carthage ; for in the 
present emulation among the tribunes, which should go farthest 
in gratifying the people, one of them, named Rubrius,*" had car- 

3S Vid. Epistolas Cornelise, apud Frag- " on ordinary occasions," because other- 

menta Cornelii Nepotis. wise the statement is untrue ; for it ap- 

37 Appian, I. 23. Plutarch, in C. Grac- pearij from Sallust, that Metellus ordered 
cho, 8, Paterculus, II. 6. one of his oificers to be scourged and put 

38 Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 9. to death, which he might do, " because," 

39 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 23. One says Sallust, "the man was a citizen of 
concession, however, of considerable im- Latium." Vid. Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 69. 
portance was made to the Latins by a law But we are by no means clear that Plu- 
oi Drusus, to which the senate gave their tarch has not again mistaken a law passed 
support ; and which en(icted that the- Lat- by another Livius Drusus, v. c. 662, for 
ins, when serving in the Roman army, one passed by his namesake, the opponent 
should be exempted from flogging on or- of Gracchus. 

dinary occasions. So says Plutarch, in C. ^0 Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 10. 
Graccho, 9. We have added the words 



64; CABALS OP GRACCHUS WITH FULVIUS FLACCUS. 

ried a law, by which this new addition was made to the number 
of colonies already to be founded under the acts of Gracchus and 
Drusus. During the absence of Gracchus, his opponents were 
enabled, as they had hoped, to supersede him more and more in 
the affections of the people ; and they found also a way to attack 
his measures, by representing it as impious to build again the 
walls of Carthage, which Scipio had solemnly devoted to per- 
petual desolation. It was reported also, that several supernatural 
accidents had delayed the progress of the work ; and on these 
grounds, the party of the senate having gained a zealous and ac- 
u. c. 632. tive leader in L. Opimius, the new consul, deter- 

mined to propose to the people, That the law of Rubrius for 
planting a colony on the site of Carthage should be repealed/' 
Gracchus had returned to Rome some little time before ; and the 
year of his tribuneship having expired, he was reduced to the 
condition of a private citizen. What course his own incHnations 
might have led him to follow, is doubtful ; but unfortunately for 
Cabals of Gracchus himsclf, lic chose to assoclatc himself to the coun- 
withFuiviusFiaccus. gels of M. Fulvlus Flaccus, one of the commission- 
ers for the execution of the agrarian law, and a man whose 
character was respected by no party in the republic. The repu- 
tation of Gracchus had already suffered from his connexion with 
Fulvius ; and now he took part with him in designs which can 
be considered as nothing less than treasonable. Charging the 
senate with spreading false reports in order to alarm the religious 
scruples of the people, the two popular leaders assembled a nume- 
rous body of their partisans armed with daggers ; and being thus 
prepared for violence, they proceeded to the capitol, where the 
people were to meet in order to decide on the repeal of the law of 
Rubrius. Here,^^ before the business of the day was yet begun, a 
private citizen, who happened to be engaged in offering a sacri- 
fice, was murdered by the partisans of Fulvius and Gracchus, for 
some words or gestures which they considered as insulting. 
This outrage excited a general alarm ; the assembly broke up in 
consternation ; and the popular leaders, after trying in vain to gain 
a hearing from the people, while they disclaimed the violence 
committed by their followers, had no other course left than to 
withdraw to their own houses. There they concerted plans of 
resistance, which, however they might believe them to be justified 
on the plea of self-defence, were justly considered by the bulk of 
They openly resist ^^6 pcoplc as au opcu rebellion against the govern- 
X^rnmenrimtare ^leut of their couutry. Thc consuV^ exagge- 
deaKtheconslu rating, pcrhaps, the alarm which he felt from the 
L. Opimius. late outrage, hastily summoned the senate together ; 

41 Appian, I. 24. 43 Appian, 25. Plutarch, 14. 

42 Appian, 25. Plutarch, in C. Grac- 
cho, 13. 



THEY RESIST THE GOVERNMENT. 65 

the body of the murdered man was exposed to the view of the 
people, and the capitol was secured by break of day with an 
armed force. The senate being informed by Opimius of the 
state of affairs, proceeded to invest him with absolute power to 
act in defence of the commonwealth, in the usual form of a reso- 
lution, " That the consul should provide for the safety of the re- 
public." At the same time, Gracchus and Fulvius were summoned 
to appear before the senate, to answer for the murder laid to their 
charge. Instead of obeying, they occupied the Aventine hill with 
a body of their partisans in arms, and invited the slaves to join 
them, promising them their liberty. They sent the son of 
Fulvius, a youth under eighteen years of age, to the consul with 
proposals of negotiation ; but were answered, that they must first 
lay down their arms ; and till they did so, the senate would hold 
no intercourse with them. The son of Fulvius, however, was 
sent back once more, in the hope of better success ; but Opimius 
arrested him, as having come in defiance of the declaration of the 
senate, and then without further delay proceeded to attack the 
rebels. He was followed by the senators and the members of 
the equestrian order, who, with their dependents, had armed 
themselves by his order ; and he had also with him a body of 
regular soldiers, amongst whom some Cretan archers are particu- 
larly noticed.** In the mean time, the behaviour of Gracchus was 
that of a man irresolute in the course which he pursued, and 
with too much regard for his country to engage heartily in the 
criminal attempt into which he had suffered himself to be drawn. 
He had left his house, it is said,*^ in his ordinary dress ; he had 
been urgent with Fulvius to propose terms of accommodation to 
the senate, and now when the Aventine was attacked, he took 
personally no part in the action. The contest, indeed, was soon 
over ; the rebels were presently dispersed ; Fulvius was dragged 
from the place to which he had fled for refuge, and was put to 
death ; while Gracchus, finding himself closely pursued, fled 
across the Tiber, and taking shelter in a grove sacred to the 
Furies, was killed at his own desire, by a single servant who had 
accompanied his flight. His head, together with that of Fulvius, 
was cut off and carried to the consul, in order to obtain the price 
which had been set upon both by a proclamation issued at the 
beginning of the engagement ; and the bodies, as well as those 
of all who perished on the same side, were thrown into the river. 
In addition to this, the houses of Gracchus and Fulvius were 
given up to plunder, their property was confiscated, and even the 
wife of Gracchus was deprived of her own jointure. But a yet 
more atrocious cruelty disgraced the victorious party ; for 
Opimius ordered the son of Fulvius,* « whom he had detained in 

" Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 16. « Velleius Paterculus, II. 6. Appian, 

« Plutarch, in C. Graccho, 15. 26. Plutarch, 17. 



66 CONDUCT OP GRACCHUS AND FULVIUS. 

custody, to be put to death ; an act of party vengeance as unjust 
as it was inhuman. It is said, that in this sedition there perished 
altogether of the partisans of the popular leaders about 3000, 
partly in the action, and partly by summary executions after- 
wards, under the consul's orders. 

The career of the two Gracchi was in many respects so simi- 
lar, and the circumstances of their deaths bore so much resem- 
blance to each other, that it is not wonderful that historians 
should have comprehended both the brothers under one common 
judgment, and have pronounced in common their acquittal or 
their condemnation. But the conduct of Gains admits of far less 
excuse than that of Tiberius ; and his death was the deserved 
punishment of rebellion, while that of his brother was an unjusti- 
fiable murder. It is true, the aristocratical party were likely to 
overturn all the measures which he had carried in his two tri- 
buneships ; but the ascendency which they had suddenly gained, 
was the fruit of no illegal acts or violence ; it arose simply out of 
the natural revolutions of popular feeling, and from the concilia- 
tory laws which the senate had of late been forward to encourage. 
If the popular assembly was disposed to take part with the con- 
sul Opimius ; if not even a single tribune could be found to inter- 
pose his negative against the proposed repeal of the law of 
Kubrius ; by what pretence of right could Gracchus and Fulvius 
appear in the capitol at the head of an armed body of partisans ? 
and still more, when a murder had been committed by some of 
their friends, and they were called before the supreme council of 
the state to answer for their violence, by what right could two 
private citizens defy the authority of their government, and take 
up a military position with an armed force in the heart of the 
capital to maintain their disobedience ? Under such circumstan- 
ces, although there is much in the character of Gracchus to 
awaken compassion for his fate, he yet only paid the just penalty 
for conduct which was treasonable in fact, and which on the 
most favourable construction of his motives, was criminally rash 
and intemperate. Still, however, the triumph of the senate was 
more that of an enraged party, than of a firm and impartial gov- 
ernment: the execution of the son of Fulvius was an act of 
gratuitous cruelty ; and the severities exercised after the sedition 
was over, were conducted without any forms of law, and had no 
other limit than the inclination of the aristocratical leaders. So 
bad, indeed, was the constitution of Rome, that the laws for the 
punishment of state criminals were uncertain and inadequate ; 
and necessity was thus supposed to allow the correction of an 
evil by summary and illegal means, because the legal means 
could not always be depended upon. It may be safely pro- 
nounced, that there is no surer criterion of an ill-framed and bar- 
barian government, than the admission of irregular acts of violence 
by any party on the plea of the public safety. 



LAWS OP THE GRACCHI ELUDED OR REPEALED. 57 

It is an important inquiry, to find what effect was permanently- 
produced on the condition of the poor by the laws ThekwsoftheGrac- 
of the two Gracchi ; or how long any of their mea- orrepeafeT^* "''^'^ 
sures were allowed to survive their authors. The agrarian law 
of Tiberius Gracchus was indirectly subverted by a law which 
permitted the poor to sell the shares of land allotted to them;^'' 
and which thus exposed them to the temptations of the high 
prices which the rich could afford to offer them, or of the various 
vexations by which a powerful neighbour might drive them to 
give up the land he coveted. But who was the proposer of this 
law, or at what precise period it passed, we have no information ; 
we can only suppose that it was carried soon after the death of 
C. Gracchus, when the power of the aristocracy was likely to be 
most predominant. By two subsequent laws*® the state of pro- 
perty was restored nearly to what it was before Tiberius Gracchus 
commenced his career ; the first, forbidding any further division 
of lands, and securing the actual possessors in the enjoyment of 
the estates which they held, but transferring the rent which they 
had been accustomed to pay to the treasury, and ordering that it 
should henceforth be distributed among the poorer citizens : the 
second, reversing this last provision, and depriving the poor of all 
share either in the property or income of the national lands. 
There is great difficulty in settling the precise date of these two 
laws ; but we may suppose them to have been carried before the 
year of Rome 649, when a new agrarian law*^ was proposed, but 
soon given up, by L. Marcius Philippus, at which time he asserted, 
in one of his speeches, that there were not two thousand indi- 
viduals in the Commonwealth who were worth any property. 
The duration of the act of C. Gracchus for the distribution of corn 
appears to have been much longer, though it is hardly possible to 
conceive that it was always fully executed. It was repealed by 
M. Octavius,^'' and, as far as can be made out from the scanty in- 
formation remaining to us, the repeal took place about the year of 
Rome 678,^ ^ the new law still providing that some support should 

47 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 27. distinguished as orators down to a much 

48 Appian, loco citato. later period. In Plutarch's " Life of Ma- 

49 Cicero, de Officiis, II. 21. rius," it is said that Marius, when tribune, 

50 Cicei-o, de Claris Oratoribus, 60. tj. c. 634, opposed with success a law for 

51 Vide Maori Licinii Oration, apud the distribution of corn among the people. 
Fragm. Sallust. However, whether the But Plutarch is so little to be trusted for 
law alluded to in that speech be the Octa- accuracy in such matters, that nothing can 
vian law or not, is certainly a mere matter be concluded from his statement. Possibly 
of conjecture. But Ferguson must be the attempt which Marius resisted was one 
wrong in fixing the Octavian law in the to confirm and enforce the corn-law of C. 
year immediately following the death of Gracchus ; in the same manner as Grac- 
Gracchus ; for Cicero expressly ranks Oc- chus had brought in a law to confirm and 
tavius with Cotta, Sulpicius, Curio, and enforce the agrarian law of his brother Ti- 
others, who flourished after the sedition of berius, although it had never been repealed 
Saturnius, u. c. 653, and continued to be since its enactment. 



68 



LAWS OF THE GRACCHI ELUDED OR REPEALED. 



be given to the poor at the pubUc expense, but reducing it to a 
much smaller amount. But it is probable that the law of Grac- 
chus had long ere this become obsolete, and that the act of 
Octavius, although far less liberal in its grants, was welcomed as a 
popular measure, inasmuch as it substituted an actual distribution 
of corn for one which had been long since abandoned as imprac- 
ticable. In short, it appears that the reforms proposed by the 
Gracchi were in the issue most injurious to the interests of the 
common people, for we are told that^'^for some years after the 
death of C. Gracchus, the oppression and corruption of the aris- 
tocracy prevailed to a greater extent than ever, insomuch that the 
liberties of the people were Avell nigh extinguished ; and allowing 
something for the prejudices of the writer from whom this state- 
ment is taken, it is yet too consonant to the usual revolutions of 
parties to be in the main rejected. 

52 Oratio C. Memmii, apud Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 3L 



CHAPTER IV. 

SKETCH OF THE INTERNAL STATE OF ROME FROM THE DEATH OF 
CAIUS GRACCHUS TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SOCIAL WAR. 
-FROM U.C. 633, B.C. 121, TO U.C. 662, B.C. 92. 

The ascendency acquired by the party of the senate after the 
death of C. Gracchus, is marked by a striking fact. From u. c. ess. b. 
C. Papirius Carbo, one of the commissioners under b.' c. k. ° 
the agrarian law, and formerly so distinguished as compie1eas1;en'dency^ 
a popular leader, deserted his former friends, and was chosen 
one of the consuls for the ensuing year. During his consulship 
he undertook the defence of his predecessor in office, L. Opimius, 
who was impeached by one of the tribunes' for punishing 
citizens in the late tumults in an illegal manner. The trial 
came on before the people, and Carbo. in the defence of his client, 
maintained that the resolution of the senate by which the consul 
had been charged to provide for the safety of the republic,^ fully 
justified him in dispensing with all the usual forms of law. And 
this dispensing power in the senate was so far recognized by the 
assembly, either from conviction or fear, that Opimius was ac- 
quitted. Carbo, however,^ was accused soon afterwards by L. 
Crassus, then a very young man, and was charged by him with 
insincerity in defending Opimius, while the manner in which he 
had constantly lamented the fate of Tiberius Gracchus, the perni- 
cious laws which he had brought forward in his tribuneship, and 
above all his share in the murder of Scipio, sufficiently demon- 
strated his real principles. For what particular crime he was 
accused we cannot discover ; but he was condemned, and de- 
stroyed himself in order to escape sentence. It is remarkable also 
that Crassus might venture to charge him with the murder of 
Scipio, although no inquiry had ever been instituted respecting 
that event, nor was it ever proved that Scipio was murdered 
at all. 

During the few years which elapsed between the death of C. 
Gracchus and the war with Jugurtha, the Roman character of the ro- 
nobility appear to have been plunged in a state of plrfod"" '"^ ^* ""^ 

1 Livy, Epitome, LXI. 3 Cicero, de Oratore, II. 40. 

2 Cicero, de Oratore, II. 30, 31. 



■yQ CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN NOBILITY. 

extreme corruption. The government of the empire was in their 
hands, and there were no circumstances of pecuUar difficulty to 
render great pubhc virtues necessary, or to tempt ambitious men 
in the hope of distinguishing themselves to relinquish the pursuit 
of selfish enjoyments. Commands in the provinces were sought 
for as a means of acquiring wealth, either by direct extortion and 
oppression, or by provoking a war with some neighbouring tribe of 
barbarians, and acquiring plunder and spoil together with some 
military renown. At home the rich nobles stood aloof from the 
bulk of their countrymen, being separated from them by the im- 
mense disparity of their fortunes ; and having little occasion for 
their services, while their own numerous slaves supplied them 
with labourers, tradesmen, stewards, agents, nay even with in- 
structors for their children. In such a state of things it mattered 
little that the people, as a body, could exercise the most absolute 
power, and sometimes could enact laws which were very injuri- 
ous to'the interests of the rich. Their force when united was 
but a poor compensation for their individual weakness ; and many 
a member of the sovereign assembly, when he had left the forum, 
and became no more than a single poor citizen, was treated by the 
rich with a pride and oppression from which the humblest labourer 
in England is secure. The causes of this are to be found in the 
want of a graduated scale of society, and of an enlightened pub- 
lic opinion. The different parts of the commonwealth were too 
distinct and too dissimilar to blend together ; and too many of the 
intermediate links in ihe chain were wanting. And there being 
thus nothing to answer to that which is with us so emphatically 
called " the public," public opinion could scarcely exist ; and at a 
distance from the capital it had no means of making itself heard, 
nor of gaining the information by which alone it can itself be 
formed. This, it will be observed, is» exactly the state of society 
fitted to breed violent revolutions. A people smarting under in- 
dividual degradation, ignorant of the true means of delivering 
themselves from it, and possessing as a body the most sovereign 
power, were likely, when roused by some active leader, to exert 
their strength in blind and furious acts of vengeance. An aris- 
tocracy, on the other hand, equally ignorant of the real evils of 
the existing orderof things, and seeing nothing but the dangerous 
violence of the tribunitian seditions, were anxious to keep the 
people quiet, sometimes by bribes, sometimes by flattery, and 
sometimes by coercion, so that they might preserve their own as- 
cendency, and maintain the actual constitution of the republic. 
Selfishness on both sides, an habitual familiarity with bloodshed, 
and a general absence of a pure morality with sufficient sanctions, 
easily gave to the civil wars that ensued, that character of fero- 
city and rapacity which marks them so peculiarly. 

The indifference shown by the nobility towards the crimes of 



MARIUS CHANGES THE CHARACTER OP THE ARMY. 7 I 

Jiigurtha, an indifference ascribed by the people to The popular party be- 
the effect of his bribes, first interrupted that ascen- fi"ength'^''°''" ''""' 
dency which the aristocratical party had enjoyed u. c. 642. u. c.643. 
since the death of Gracchus. An active tribune,* C. Memmius, 
availed himself of the favourable opportunity ; the people, roused 
by his invectives against the corruption of the nobility, began to 
re-assume their share in tlie management of affairs ; their voice 
forced the senate to declare war against Jugurtha ; and the mis- 
conduct of the generals employed in the first campaigns, giving 
additional strength to their complaints of corruption, a formidable 
court of inquiry consisting of three members was instituted,^ with 
a general commission to investigate all cases of pubhc delinquen- 
cy. The inquisitors conducted themselves with the utmost rigour ; 
and five persons of the highest rank,^ amongst whom was L. 
Opimius, were on this occasion found guilty of corrupt practices, 
and were either condemned to pay heavy fines or were banished.'' 
Soon after, Q,. Cascilius Metellus, a man of spotless reputation, 
was appointed to take the command in Africa ; and by his ability, 
and that of his successor, C. Marius, the war with Jugurtha, as 
has been mentioned in a former part of this work, was brought 
to a triumphant end. 

But we must not omit to notice here a memorable change in- 
troduced by Marius, when consul, in the constitu- ^^jug changes the 
tion of the Roman army. Hitherto the old aristo- character of the army. 
cratical principle, so universal among the commonwealths of 
Greece, had been carefully observed ; and none were admitted to 
serve in the regular infantry of the legions, except they possessed 
a certain amount of property :^ the poorest citizens, unless under 
circumstances of urgent necessity, were only employed in the na- 
val service. But Marius,® when raising soldiers to accompany 
him into Africa, disregarded the usual practice altogether, and 
enlisted into the legions citizens of the lowest and most indigent 
classes of society. His motives for this unprecedented measure 
are variously stated ; but it may be most probably imputed to a 
mingled feeling of personal ambition, and of hatred towards all 
those who were any way distinguished for birth or fortune. 
Himself sprung from the lowest of the people, and having forced 
his way to the high station which he filled, amidst the scorn and 
aversion of the nobility, it was his delight to be the consul of the 
populace ; and as he had risen by their favour, to show that he cared 
for the support of no order in the state besides. He knew, moreover, 
that an army formed out of those who have no property to lose, 
becomes the ready instrument of its general's ambition, and easily 

* Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 27. 30, 31. ^ Opimius was banished, as appears from 

5 Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 40. Cicero, in Pisonem, 40. 

« Cicero, de Claris Oratoribus, 34. « Pdybius, VI. 19. 

9 Sallust, Bell Jugurth. 86. 

6 



72 Cj\reer of l. appuleius saturninus. 

transfers to him the duty and affection which it owes to its coun- 
try and its government. Marius stands conspicuous among those 
who have risen to greatness by favouring the envy and hatred of 
the dregs of the community towards all above them, and who have 
purchased the forgiveness of the multitude for their crimes and 
their tyranny, because every thing m.ost noble, most exalted, 
and most sacred, has been especially the object of their persecution. 

About the end of the Jugurthine war, Q,. Servilius Csepio, 
u. c. 647. being then consul,'" procured an alteration of that 

laW of Gracchus co/- law of C, Gracchus, which had committed the 
power^ ^^^ ■"" "^'^ whole judlcial power to the equestrian oider. By 
the new law, the judges were to be chosen jointly from the sen- 
ate and the knights. The character of Csepio seems to render 
it probable, that the tribunals, as at that time constituted, were 
very strict in the punishment of corrupt and oppressive magis- 
trates ; and that he wished, by restoring a share of the judicial 
authority to the senate, to secure a gi eater chance of impunity 
for such otienders. At least, it is remarkable, that during his 
command in Gaul," where he was stationed to oppose the expect- 
ed invasion of the Cimbri, he committed a robbery of the sacred 
treasure belonging to a temple at Thoulouse, which was held 
by the inhabitants in particular veneration. Nor 
was his ability as a general greater than his in- 
tegrity ; for he Avas accounted the principal cause of the bloody 
defeat sustained by the Romans in the following year, when the 
united armies of himself and his successor in the consulship, Cn. 
Mallius, were overthrown by the Cimbri, with the loss of 80,000 
men. The popular cry was loud against him, and he was ac- 
cused some time afterwards, by C. Norbanus, one of the tri- 
bunes ;'" but the aristocratical party m.ade a strong effort to save 
him, and his condemnation was only procured by actual vio- 
lence. It appears that his trial was attended by a furious riot, 
in which M. ^milius Scaurus, the first on the roll of the senate, 
was wounded by a stone ; and two of the tribunes, who were 
preparing to interpose their negative on the proceedings of the 
judges, were driven by the populace from the court. In this 
manner Capio was condemned and banished ; and it is said, that 
his sentence was accompanied by the unusual disgrace of hav- 
ing his property confiscated, by order of the people.'^ 

The war with the Cimbri and the other noithern tribes was 
Career of L. Appuleius '""Of Y^t finished, whou the most profligate of dcma- 
eaturniiius. gogucs, L. Appulcius Saturninus, made himself for 

the first time conspicuous. His animosity to the senate is attrib- 
uted by Cicero to a personal slight which he received when he 

'" Cicero, de Claris Oratoribus, 43. De '2 Cicero, dc Oratore, II. 49. 
Ornlore, It. 49. Cassiodorus, Clironicon. '^ Livy, Epitome, 67. 
" Strabo, IV. 204. Edit. Xyland. 



HIS TRIBUNESHIP AND POLICY. 73 

was qusestor,'^ for at a period of scarcity, the charge of superin- 
tendiijg the supply of the markets was taken away from hhn, and 
given to M. ^Emilius Scaurus, one of the most distinguished of 
the nobiUty. He had been one of the tribunes for the year of 
Rome 650, and in the following year, Q,. Metellus,'^ who was then 
censor, noticed him for the infamy of his general life, and would 
have degraded him from his rank by virtue of his censorial power, if 
his colleague in the censorship had not refused to concur with 
him in the sentence. In the year next succeeding, when Marius 
was in his fifth consulship, Saturninus declared himself a second 
time candidate for the tribuneship ; but finding himself rejected, 
he waylaid one of the successful candidates, A. Nonnius, on his 
way home from the place of election, drove him into an adjoining 
tavern, and there by the aid of an armed rabble, murdered him. 
His partisans, availing themselves of the general consternation, 
assembled early the following morning, and elected him tribune 
without opposition ; and such was the state of things at Rome, 
that this mockery of all law was submitted to, and Saturninus 
was recognized in the character which he had usurped by murder. 
He was not, however, without associates ; they were C. Servilius 
Glaucia, who vvas at that time one of the prsetors, and C. Marius, 
who, still unsatisfied with the honours he had gained, was now 
aspiring to a sixth consulship, and was glad to acquire the sup- 
port of a man so popular with the multitude as Saturninus, It 
is said, that Marius gained his election as httle from the unbiassed 
choice of the people as his friend Appuleius had done ;'« but that 
bribery was unscrupulously used, and that his old soldiers at the 
same time were introduced into the city, to overawe by their tu- 
mults the decisions of the comitia. In this manner the cause of 
the factious and worthless part of the people obtained an unusual 
triumph, and might well anticipate the gratification of its wildest 
hopes, when Rome beheld at the same moment C. Marius a con- 
sul, C. Servilius Glaucia a preetor, and L. Appuleius Saturninus 
a tribune of the commons. 

The proceedings of the following year seem hardly consistent 
with the faintest shadow of regular government; u.c. ess. 

_T, .. , -, '-' -.i^i His tribuneship and 

for both parties m turn had recourse, without lies- policy. 
itation, to measures of open violence. But we may observe, that 
Saturninus did not tread in the steps of the Gracchi, nor was it the 
interest of the poor citizens of Rome that he professed to espouse. 
He seems to have adopted a policy yet more mischievous, and 
to have framed his laws for the enrichment of the needy soldiery 
who had served under Marius in his successive consulships, and 
who might easily be induced to raise their favourite general to the 

1* Cicero, pro Sextio, 17. '^ Plutarch, in Mario, 28. 

»5 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 28. 



74 HIS TRIBUNESHIP AND POLICY. 

utmost height of his ambition. He proposed an agrarian law,"' 
for the division of certain districts in Gaul, which, having been 
overrun by the Cimbri, had after their defeat fallen into the hands 
of the Romans ; and he added to the law a clause, by which the 
senators were bound to swear obedience to it within five days 
after it should have passed the assembly of the people. But it was 
apprehended that the soldiers of Marius were likely to be the only 
gainers from the projected allotment of lands ; and among these 
there was a large proportion of citizens of the allied states of Italy, 
and also of the agricultural labourers, a class of men which offered 
an excellent supply of hardy soldiers, and of which Marius had 
largely availed himself, enlisting, we are told,'^ slaves as well as 
freemen. Many of these men had received from their general 
admission to the rank of Roman citizens,'' for their gallant be- 
haviour in the late war : for example, he had at one time confer- 
red this reward on a thousand soldiers^" of Camerinum and its dis- 
trict, and had defended himself, when charged with having acted 
illegally, by saying, that the din of arms had prevented him from 
hearing the still voice of the laws. So that the party of Marius 
and Saturninus consisted not so much of the citizens of the cap- 
ital, as of a country and provincial interest : and in the disturb- 
ances that followed, the inhabitants of Rome espoused generally 
the side of the aristocracy, as feeling that the projects of the three 
associates were as little favourable to them as to the senate itself. 
On the other hand, a multitude of citizens,^' or of men who hoped 
to become such, flocked in from the country to support the proposed 
laws of Saturninus ; and as force seemed likely to be more em- 
ployed than any legal methods, many came to Rome on this oc- 
casion, who, although they could not vote in a lawful assembly, 
were yet able to give their party a powerful support by clamour 
and violence. It was by these arms, indeed, that Saturninus 
triumphed. Baebius,'^^ one of his colleagues, who interposed his 
negative on the agrarian law, was driven from the place of meet- 
ing by showers of stones ; and when some of the aristocratical 
party exclaimed, " that they heard thunder," a sound which, ac- 
cording to the custom of the Romans, should at once have brok- 
en up the assembly, Saturninus replied, " that it would hail pre- 
sently, if they were not quiet." The people of the city, incensed 
at this open violence, endeavoured to maintain their ground by 
force, but they were overpowered by the armed mob at the dis- 
posal of Saturninus ; and being obliged to abandon the field, 
the law was passed amidst the shouts of the victorious party. 
Other laws in the same spirit were carried in the same manner: 

" Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 29. 21 Appian, I. 29. 

»^ Plutarch, in Mario, 9. 22 Auctor de Viris illustribus,in Vita Sa- 

•9 Cicero, pro Balbo, 20. turnini. 

20 Plutarch, in Mario, 28, 



HIS TRIBUNESHIP AND POLICY. 



75 



one, decreeing a division of lands in Africa to the veteran soldiers, 
and assigning a hundred jiigera to each man ; another, ordering 
that colonies should be planted in various parts of Sicily and 
Greece ; and a third, appropriating the treasure plundered at 
Thoulouse, by Q,. Csepio, for the purchase of lands to be distrib- 
uted amongst the poor. To these laws, as has been already men- 
tioned, the senate was ordered to swear obedience within five 
days ; a step concerted by Marius and his associates, to procure 
the destruction of Q,. Metellus, whose undaunted integrity they 
knew would never allow him to consent to a measure which 
he deemed mischievous, or to submit to an usurped and un- 
lawful authority. Saturninus and Glaucia hated him, because he 
had noticed them both when he was censor, for the infamy of 
their lives. Marius had been patronized by him and his family 
in early youth,^' and had since deprived him of the honour of 
finishing the war with Jugurtha by his intrigues and calumnies. 
A vile nature hates none so much as those from whom it has re- 
ceived kindness, and whose kindness it has recompensed with 
injury ; there was enough, therefore, besides the constant antipa- 
thy which evil bears to good, to make Marius the determined 
enemy of Metellus. 

As soon as the law was passed, Marius,^^ in his quality of 
consul, expressed his indignation against it in the senate, and de- 
clared that he would never submit to take the oath required. 
Metellus made a similar declaration, and the senate applauding 
their firmness, was prepared to offer an unanimous resistance to 
the oath. But on the evening of the fifth day, Marius hastily 
called the senate together, and told them that it was too dangerous 
openly to oppose the will of the people ; he judged it expedient, 
therefore, to take the oath with a qualification, swearing to obey 
the law so far as it was lawful. They would thus pacify the 
people for the moment, and when the multitude of citizens from 
the country should have returned to their homes, it would be easy 
to show that the law had not passed legally, the assembly having 
continued to vote after thunder had been heard, and thus the 
obligation of the oath would be null and void. Confounded by 
this display of the consul's treachery at a moment when there 
was no time left to concert any new plan of proceeding, the 
senators listened to him in silence ; and he, without giving them 
leisure to recover themselves, led them out instantly to the temple 
of Saturn, and there was himself amongst the first to take the 
oath. The rest of the senate followed his example, no man being 
willing to expose himself, as an individual, to the fury of the mul- 
titude, with the single exception of Metellus. With admirable 
firmness that excellent citizen resisted all the aguments and en- 

23 Plutarch, in Mario, 4. 24 Appian, I. 30. 



!yg BANISHMENT OF Q. METELLUS. 

treaties of his friends, and persisted in his refusal to swear, saying 
to those around him,^^ "that a good man was distinguished by his 
adherence to what was right, in defiance of personal danger." 
On the following day Saturninus exhorted his followers,^^ who 
now usurped the functions of the Roman people, to pass an act 
BanishmentofaMe- of hauishment against MctcUus, and to order that 
teiiiis. the consuls, by a public proclamation, should in- 

terdict him from the use of fire and water within the limits of 
Italy. The citizens of the capital wished to make another 
attempt on this occasion to shake off the tyranny under which 
they were labouring, and ofiered Metellus to oppose to the utmost 
the sentence that was to be proposed against him. But he, 
rightly judging it the duty of a good subject to submit peaceably 
to physical force, as much as it had been to refuse active obedi- 
ence to an illegal command, declined their profiered assistance, 
and telling them " that he never would permit the safety of his 
country to be endangered on his account," withdrew quietly from 
Rome. The law of banishment passed without opposition, and 
Marius had the gratification to proclaim it, and to utter the usual 
prohibition of the use of fire and water. 

It is mentioned that Saturninus, amongst his other laws," 
proposed also to confirm the corn law of C. Gracchus, by which 
corn was to be distributed monthly to the people at five-sixths of 
an as for the modius or peck. This sufficiently shows that the 
law of Gracchus had tacitly become obsolete. Its renewal was 
resisted strongly by the aristocratical party, and some of the col- 
leagues of Saturninus interposed their negative upon it. But he 
disregarding all legal impediments, proceeded to put it to the 
vote, when Q,. Servilius Caepio, one of the quaestors, and son to 
the consul who had fallen a victim to the indignatian of the 
people on account of his ill success against the Cimbri, made an 
attack upon the assembly at the head of a body of citizens 
attached to the senate, overthrew the balloting urns, dispersed the 
multitude, and prevented the passing of the law. So wretched 
was the condition of Rome, that those who called themselves the 
friends of order were driven to support the constitution by acts of 
illegal violence. 

■ Another law, as is probable,^^ was proposed and carried by C. 

25 Plutarch, in Mario, 29. by Q. Cfepio ; becnnse it appears from 

26 Appian, I. 31. Cicero, de Oratore, II. 48, that the eques- 

27 Khetorica.ad Herennium.I. 12. trian order were again in possession of the 
23 Cicero says in his treatise, De Claris judicial power at the trial of C. Norbanus, 

Oratoribus, fil, that Glaucia had attached which must have taken place within four 

to himself the equestrian order by the law or five years of the praetorship of Glaucia ; 

which he had carried in their favour; and Livius Drusus, u. c. 662, attempted 

" Equestrem Ordinem beneficio Le<:;is de- once more to give the senate a place among 

Tinxerat." It is supposed that this law the judges, which in his time they did not 

was a repeal of that lately passed, v. c 647, enjoy. 



REBELLION OP SATURNINUS. 77 

Serviliiis Glaucia, to repeal the late act of the consul Q,. Caepio, 
and to restore the judicial power entirely to the equestrian order, 
according to the law of C. Gracchus. The knights were thus 
won over to favour the pretensions which -Glaucia was now mak- 
ing to the consulship, and their support, together with that of the 
popular party, was likely to decide the election in his favour. 
Saturninus also intended to offer himself a third time as a candi- 
date for the office of tribune ; and together with himself he 
brought forward a man of the lowest rank, named Equitius,^* 
who professed to be a younger brother of Tiberius and C. Grac- 
chus ; and although his claim had been utterly rejected by the 
family, it yet won him some favour with the people, who re- 
garded the name of Gracchus with great affection. When the 
elections came on, Saturninus and Equitius were chosen tribunes ; 
but the hopes of Glaucia were in danger of being disappointed, for 
M. Antonius, so famous for his eloquence, easily obtained his 
nomination as one of the consuls, and C. Memmius was a formi- 
dable competitor for the place of the other. But Saturninus had 
committed so many outrages with impunity, that Rebellion of satur- 
he seemed now to bid defiance to the laws ; and an "'°"'- 
armed party, acting under his orders, assaulted and murdered 
Memmius in the midst of the election, and at once dispersed the 
people from the comitia in consternation at this new crime. But 
this last violence awakened the senate, and M. ^milius Scau- 
rus,^® the first on the roll of the senators, and the same person 
who twelve years before had moved that the consul Opimius 
ishould defend the republic against the party of Gracchus, now 
again persuaded the senate to commit the same authority to the 
consuls Marius and Valerius Flaccus, and to give them the usual 
solemn charge to provide for the safety of the commonwealth. 
Alarmed at this resolution, Saturninus, Glaucia, Equitius, and a 
body of their followers in arms, seized the capitol, and declared 
themselves in open rebellion. Marius, their old associate, and 
still secretly their friend, could not however avoid acting upon the 
orders of the senate, and summoned every citizen to maintain the 
cause of the republic. All the tribunes,^' except Saturninus; all 
the praetors, except Glaucia ; all the senators, all the equestrian 
order, and all the most respectable citizens in Rome, assembled at 
the consul's call, and formed a force so formidable, that Marius 
was reduced to the condition of an unwilling instrument in their 
hands, employed by them against a party with which in his 
heart he entirely sympathized. The relaels, however, resisted for 
some time, till Marius cut off the pipes by which the capitol was 

29 ValeriuSj MaximuS; TIL 8. Appian, ^9 Auctor de Viris illustribus, in VitaM. 
I. 32. jiEmilii Scauri. 

3^ Cicero, pro Rabirio, Perd. 7. 



78 HIS MEMORY HELD IN DETESTATION. 

supplied with water, ^'^ and thus obhged them to surrender. They 
submitted themselves to him with no great reluctance, relying on 
his known dispositions in their favour ; and he. anxious to save 
their lives, promised them their safety^^ without the authority of 
the senate, and restraining the indignation of his followers, shut 
them up in the Curia Hostilia," the building originally appropriated 
for the meetings of the senate, under pretence of reserving them 
for an impartial trial hereafter. But the armed citizens under his 
He and hi. partisans couimaud mistrusting the lenity of the consul, as- 
are put to death. saultcd the placc of their confinement, and mount- 
ing upon the roof of the building, they took off the tiling, ^^ and 
destroyed with missile weapons the whole of the defenceless pris- 
oners below. It is almost peculiar to Roman history, that the 
vengeance finally inflicted even on so great a criminal as Satur- 
ninus, should more resemble a murder than a legal execution. 

The late popular leaders were by no means regretted by the peo- 
ple as the Gracchi had been, for not only was their conduct so des- 
perate as to have disgusted all but the most profligate, but their mea- 
sures, as has been observed, had been less immediately directed to 
the advantages of the citizens of Rome. It appears rather that Sa- 
His memory is held in tumiuus was generally regarded as an enemy to his 
detestation. couutry ; and two remarkable instances of this feel- 

ing are recorded, which deserve to be noticed as illustrative of 
the arbitrary and violent spirit by which the administration of 
justice at Rome was characterized. C. Decianus,^^ a man, it is 
said, of the utmost respectability, was accusing P. Furius, of whom 
more will be added presently, before the people. In the course of 
he speech he happened to complain of the manner in which Sa- 
turninus had been put to death ; and for this offence he not only 
lost his cause, although Furius was notoriously a man of most 
infamous life, but was himself brought to trial and condemned to 
banishment. Sex. Titus also was tried and condemned^'' for hav- 
ing a statue of Saturninus in his house. Now it is obvious that 
there could have been no law by which either of these acts was 
made a crime, and they were punished merely on the principle 
that a man might be found guilty for any thing which his judges 
cho.se to consider as criminal, whether it were an offence defined 
by law or not. The fate of Furius, who escaped, owing to the 
imprudent speech of his accuser, was, according to Appian,^^ in 
itself sufficiently extraordinary. He was one of the tribunes for 
the year which followed the sixth consulship of Marius ; and 
when, after the death of Saturninus, attempts Avere made to pro- 

32 Cicero, pro Rabirio, Perd. 11. 36 Cicero, pro Rabirio, Perd. 9. Vale- 

33 Cicero, pro Rabirio, Perd. 10. rius Maxiinus, VIII. 1. 

3« Velleius Paicrculus, II. 12. 37 Cicero and Valerius Maximus, ubi 

35 Appian, I. 32. supra. 

33 De Bell. Civil. I. 33. 



REVOLT OF THE SLAVES IN SICILY. 79 

cure the recall of Metellus from banishment, he mterposed his ne- 
gative upon them all. The son of Metellus threw himself at his 
feet in vain before the assembled people, and with tears entreated 
him to relent. But the people felt so much indis- 

. , T^ • xi X 1 1 J Recall of Q. Metellus . 

nation agamst b urius, that when he was accused 
before them for his resistance to their will, the multitude, without 
waiting to hear his defence, fell upon him and tore him to pieces. 
This story, however, is only related by Appian, and does not 
seem altogether probable. So unusual a burst of popular fury is 
not likely to have been excited by such a cause, when the lapse 
of some months must have effaced the impression at first pro- 
duced by the sight of the treatment shown to the prayers of a 
son in behalf of his father. But here, as in so many other in- 
stances in Roman history, the want of good authority, and the 
imperfection of all existing reports of the times, render it impos- 
sible to attain to a knowledge of the truth. 

About this time Marcus Aquilius, who commanded in Sicily as 
proconsul, concluded a bloody war which had long devastated that 
island. We speak of the insurrection of the slaves, to which 
we have before briefly alluded, and which may here deserve to 
be noticed somewhat more particularly. 

The termination of the second Punic war had left the whole 
of Sicily in the quiet possession of the Romans. The jjevoit of the slaves 
inhabitants, when the immediate evils of the con- •" Sicily. 
test were over, were on the whole mildly treated. Some of them 
had indeed adhered throughout to the cause of the Romans ; 
and even in those states which had most vigorously opposed 
them, there were several considerations which might move the 
conquerors to forbearance. They had long been the zealous al- 
lies of Rome during the reign of Hiero ; their revolt had been of 
short duration, and the bulk of the people had been either deceiv- 
ed or forced into taking a part in it ; besides that the importance 
of the island to Rome, and its neighbourhood to Carthage, ren- 
dered it expedient to conciliate the inhabitants as much as possi- 
ble to the Roman government. Accordingly, whilst some of the 
Sicilian states were exempt from all taxes whatsoever,^^ the great 
majority were subject only to the same burthen which they had 
supported under their native princes, the payment namely of a 
tenth part of the produce of the soil ; and the collection of this 
tax was so well regulated by law, that the farmer was fully pro- 
tected from paying more than a just tenth, or from suffering any 
thing vexatious in the manner of payment. Land, thus compara- 
tively unencumbered, and enjoying the highest reputation for fertil- 
ity, became a desirable object of purchase to the wealthy citizens of 
Rome and Latium : large estates were accordingly bought up by 

39 Cicero, in Verrem, III. 6. 



80 FIRST REVOLT HEADED BY EUNUS. 

them,^" and were stocked with vast numbers of slaves, the use of 
whom at this time, as we have already noticed, began almost 
entirely to supersede that of free labourers. In order to derive 
from them the greatest possible profit/' they were miserably fed 
and clothed, and were thus driven to support themselves by rob- 
bery ; their manner of life as shepherds, in which service a large 
proportion of them was employed, affording them great facilities 
in the practice of plunder. It is said, moreover, that the govern- 
ors of the island were deterred from punishing these offenders by 
the wealth and influence of their masters, who were well pleased 
that their slaves should provide for their own wants at the ex- 
pense of the public. 

In this slate of things^ ^ the slaves began to entertain projects 
First revolt headed by of 9- general iiisurrcction, and a leader was not long 
Eunus. wanting to call them forth into action. Eurius, a 

Syrian by birth, was the slave of a citizen of Enna, named Antig- 
enes, and had acquired great influence amongst his companions 
in bondage by pretending to divine inspiration, and particularly 
to a knowledge of the future. Amongst many guesses into futu- 
rity, some were likely to be verified by the event; and these 
established his reputation, so that at last he professed himself to 
be favoured with constant communication from heaven ; and it 
is said that he used to secrete in his mouth some lighted com- 
bustible substance, and thus amazed the vulgar by seeming to 
breathe forth smoke and fire, as if under the immediate impulse 
of the god who spoke from within him. The belief in his mi- 
raculous endowments was so general, that the slaves of another 
citizen of Enna, named Damophilus, unable to bear the cruelty 
with which they were treated both by their master and his wife, 
and bent on revenging themselves, applied first to Eunus, and 
inquired of him if the gods would grant success to their attempts. 
He eagerly caught at the opportunity thus offered him; assured 
them of the favour of heaven, and exhorted them to execute their 
purpose without delay .^^ The slaves employed on the several 
estates in the neighbourhood of Enna were excited by the call of 
the slaves of Damophilus; a body of four hundred men was col- 
lected, and they entered the town under the command of Eunus 
himself, whose trick of breathing fire is said to have produced a 
great impression on the minds of his followers. The insurgents 
weie instantly joined by the slaves in the town, and an indiscrim- 
inate massacre of the free inhabitants followed, in which men, 
women, and children, were treated'with equal cruelty. Damophi- 
lus and his wife were seized at their country house, dragged 

« Florus, III. 19. Diodorus Siculns, ■" Diodorus Siculus, XXXIV. Eel. 2. 
XXXLV. Ecloga secunda, edit. Rhodo- ■•a Oj.Hiorus Siculus, XXXIV. Eel. 2. 
man. " Diodorus Siculus, XXXIV. Eel. 2. 



THE REVOLT QUELLED BY P. RUPILIUS. 81 

in trimT:]ph to Enna, and there murdered ; but their daughter was 
saved by the slaves, in gratitude for the kindnesses which they had 
always met with at her hands. Meantime Eunus spared out of 
the general slaughter such of the citizens of Enna as understood 
the manufacture of arms, and compelled them to labour in order 
to supply his followers with weapons. He also took to himself 
the title and the ensigns of a king, while he bestowed those of 
queen on the female slave who lived with him : and he formed a 
council, consisting of those of his associates most eminent for 
their courage or ability. In three days he was at the head of 
six thousand men tolerably armed, besides a great multitude pro- 
vided only with hatchets, spits, or any other weapons which 
they could find ; and the number of the insurgents daily increas- 
ing, he was enabled to overrun the country, and several times to 
encounter with success the Roman forces which attempted to op- 
pose him. The example presently became contagious : a Cili- 
cian slave, named Cleon, took up arms in another part of the 
island ; and far from attempting to rival Eunus, he immediately 
acknowledged him as king, and acted in every thing by his 
orders. L. Hypsseus, one of the praetors, who arrived from Rome 
about a month after the commencement of the revolt, brought a 
regular army of eight thousand men against the insurgents, but 
was outnumbered by them and defeated. Several other Roman 
officers met with the same bad fortune, and the slaves made 
themselves masters of many of the towns of that island. Their 
career was first checked by M. Perpena, one of the prsetors,^'* and 
afterwards was finally stopped by the consul, P. Rupilius,^^ who 
has been already noticed as the author of measures The revolt queiied by 
of extreme severity against the partisans of Tibe- Pi^"P'ii"s. 
rius Gracchus. This officer first recovered the town of Tauro- 
minium, after a long blockade, in which the slaves were reduced 
to the utmost extremities of famine ; and having put to death all 
those who fell into his hands, he proceeded to besiege Enna, the 
first scene of the revolt, and the principal stronghold of the insur- 
gents. The sure process of blockade rendered the condition of 
the besieged desperate ; Cleon was killed in a sally, and the 
place was in a short time betrayed to the Romans. Eunus es- 
caped from the town, but was soon afterwards taken, and died, 
it is said, in prison of a loathsome disease ; after which Rupilius 
proceeded to regulate the state of the island, and ten commis- 
sioners were sent from Rome to assist in the settlement,^ ^ exact- 
ly in the manner which we have seen regularly practised by the 
senate after the conclusion of its wars with Antiochus, Perseus, 
Achaia, and Carthage. 

« Florus, III. 19. « Cicero, in Verrem, IL 13. 16. 

45 Diodoius, XXXIV. Eel. 2. Livy, 
Epitom. LIX. 



82 SECOND REVOLT HEADED BY ATHENIO. 

The revolt was thus apparently suppressed ; but the cause of 
the insurgents found every where so many who sympathized with 
it, that similar attempts were made within a few years, in several 
other parts of the empire. One of these deserves notice from its 
singularity. A Roman knight, of the name of T. Minucius,*'' 
having incurred a debt beyond his means, and being pressed for 
the payment of it, purchased five hundred suits of armour, and 
having conveyed ihem secretly into the country, employed them 
in arming his slaves ; and then usurping the style and dignity of 
a king, invited the slaves in general to join him, and murdered his 
creditors, whom he contrived to get into his power. Ridiculous 
as this leader was, he assembled round him above 3000 followers, 
and was not reduced by the prajtor who was sent against him, 
Second revolt headed without maintaining an obstinate struggle. But a 
byAtiienio. fg^j, morc scrious disturbance soon broke out for 

the second time in Sicily. When C. Marius was looking for troops 
in every quarter to oppose the invasion of the Cimbri,^^ a decree 
of the senate empowered him to demand assistance from the more 
distant allies of the republic ; and he sent accordingly to Nico- 
medes, king of Bithynia, requiring of him a certain contingent of 
soldiers. Nicomedes excused himself, by saying, that so large a 
portion of his subjects had been carried off and sold for slaves in 
different parts of the empire, that he was unable to raise the force 
demanded of him. Upon this, the senate issued an order, that no 
freeborn native of any state in alliance with Rome, should be kept 
as a slave in any of the Roman provinces ; and the provincial 
magistrates were desired to institute inquiries, and to liberate 
within their several jurisdictions all those who came within the 
terms of the senate's decree. Licinius Nerva, the praetor of Sicily, 
began accordingly to set at liberty above 800 slaves within a few 
days ; but he was soon persuaded by the rich slave-owners in the 
island to suspend his proceedings, and he in future referred all 
those who applied to him for their liberty to the decision of their 
own masters. The slaves thus suddenly disappointed of the 
hopes which they had felt themselves encouraged by the senate 
itself to entertain,^ ^ resolved to obtain their freedom for them- 
selves ; insurrections broke out in several parts of the island, and 
although at first partially suppressed, revived again with redoubled 
fury. Sabrius and Athenio were two of the chief insurgents ; and 
the latter displayed considerable military talents, paying more re- 
gard to the quality than to the numbers of his army, and accus- 
toming his men to .regular discipline. He also, like Eunus, ap- 

*'' Diodorus Siculus, XXXVI. Eel. 1. his account of these transactions, from his 

*^ Diodorus Siculus, XXX Vr. Eel. 1. being himself a Sicilian, and always show- 

^9 Diodorus Siculus, XXXVI. Eel 1. ing a lively intere»t in events that hap- 

It may be observed, that the testimony of pened in his own country. 

Diodorus is more than usually valuable in 



TRIAL AND ACQ,UITTAL OP AGIUILIUS. §3 

pealed to the superstition of his followers, and declared that the 
stars had foretold that he should be king over all Sicily. Several 
Roman prastors were defeated with loss in successive attempts to 
reduce the revolters ; and the whole of Sicily became a scene of 
plunder and destruction: many free inhabitants of the poorer 
class availing themselves of the general confusion, and carrying 
on an organized system of devastation throughout the country. 
At length, Marcus Aquilius, the colleague of Marius in his fifth 
consulship, was sent against this obstinate enemy. He followed 
the example of Rupilius, by shutting the insurgents up in their 
strongholds, and surrounding them with lines of circumvallation, 
till famine obliged them to surrender. Many, how- .^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ 
ever, had fallen by the sword in several previous Aquiims. 
engagements ; and those who at last submitted were sent to 
Rome, and destined there to afford sport for the populace, by be- 
ing exposed to fight with beasts in the amphitheatre. But it is 
said that they preserved their fierceness to the last, and instead of 
combating with the beasts, turned their swords against one 
another, and shed their blood upon the altars appointed for the 
sacrifices usually performed at the games, the last survivor com- 
pleting the slaughter by killing himself The peace of the island 
thus with difficulty restored, was maintained for the future by 
regulations of extreme severity. No slave was allowed to carry 
a weapon f° and on one occasion, when a boar of remarkable 
size had been sent as a present to L. Domitins, at that time prsetor 
of the island, he inquired who had killed it, and finding that it 
was a slave employed as a shepherd, he summoned the man be- 
fore him, and asked him how he had contrived to destroy so large 
an animal. The shepherd replied, that he had killed it with a 
boar spear ; upon which Domitius ordered him immediately to be 
crucified, for having used a weapon in defiance of the law. In 
consequence of this arbitrary system, we read of no more revolts 
of the slaves in Sicily for a very long period. 

But whatever were the mihtary services of Manius Aquilius, 
in subduing the insurgent slaves, his conduct as a xnai and acquuai of 
man too much resembled that of his father whom u^'c'^ell 
we have seen poisoning the wells in Asia, and afterwards tried 
for his corruption and oppression. His son was in like manner 
brought to trial on a similar charge ; and it appears that his guilt 
could not be denied ; for M. Antonius, the orator, who acted as 
his advocate, could only save him by a violent appeal to the feel- 
ings of the judges.^' He contrasted the former honours of the 
accused with his present condition ; and at last he tore open the 
dress of his client, and exposed the wounds which he had received 

50 Cicero, in Verrem, V. 3. si Cicero, de Oratore, II. 47. In Ver- 

reni,V. 1. 



34 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF SUMPTUARY LAWS. 

in the course of his services as a soldier. So little were the du- 
ties of a court of justice observed at Rome, that this most irrelevant 
mode of defence was completely successful ; and Aquilius escaped 
condemnation. How hard is it for good government and equal 
justice to exist among a people who allow their feelings to influ- 
ence them against their reason in the discharge of a solemn duty ! 

In the following year, an attempt was made to check the vio- 
lent measures sometimes proposed by the tribunes, 
^' ^" ®^^' and which the people were used to approve without 

due consideration. A law was passed, which bears the names 
Th^ r»..ii,nn nnH of both thc cousuls, Q,. Cascilius Metellus Nepos, a 
Didianiaw. couslu of Q,. Metellus Nimndicus, and T. Uidms, 

and by which it was enacted, that every law should be published 
on three successive market days,^^ before it could be submitted to 
the voles of the people-; it was also provided, that the people 
should not be obliged to accept or reject any clause of a law con- 
trary to their wishes, as was often the case at present, when 
several enactments being contained in one law, and proposed to 
the votes of the assembly all together, it was necessary either to 
approve or to negative the whole without discrimination. 

The year of Rome 656, is marked by some discussions which 

Origin and prc^ess of ^rOSC OU the SUbjeCt of SUmptUary laWS. In a con- 
sumptuary hws. stitution which permitted the magistrates to niter- 
fere with the private life of every citizen, to the extent praciised 
by the censors, the expenses of the table were not likely to escape 
the control of the law. We read of various statutes passed from 
time to time, with a view to restrain what was called luxury : in 
the year 538, only a year after the battle of Cannae, C. Oppius, 
one of the tribunes,^ ^ brought forward a law to regulate the de- 
gree of ornament which might be allowed in female dress, and 
forbidding the ladies of Rome to use a carriage within the city, 
except in their attendance on the public sacrifices. But after the 
end of the second Punic war, it was contended that such provi- 
sions were fitted only for a season of national distress, and the 
Oppian law was repealed. Of the laws directed particularly 
against the expenses of the table, the first in order of time is fixed 
about the year 571,^^ and was proposed by Orchius, one of the 
tribunes, on the recommendation of the senate. It limited the 
number of guests at any entertainment ; and ordered, as we are 
told, that the doors of the house should be left open during the 
meal, to guard against any violation of its enactments. A little 
more than twenty years afterwards, in the interval between the 
overthrow of Perseus and the third Punic war, the attention of 
the senate was again directed to the same subject. By a decree 

B2 Cicero, Philipp. V. 3. ProDomo,20. 54 Macrobius, Saturn. II. 13. Apnd 
6' Livy, XXXIV. 1. Facciolati Lexicon, in Voce " Orchia." 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP SUMPTUARY LAWS. §5 

of that asserably,^^ the principal citizens who were in the habit 
of giving entertainments to one another, during the celebration of 
the games in honour of Cybele, were obliged to make oath before 
the consuls that they would not. expend on any meal more than a 
hundred and twenty ases, or 7s. 9d. sterling, exclusive of the 
sum paid for bread, vegetables, and wine ; that they would use 
no other wine than that made in Italy, and that they would not 
have more than a hundred pounds weight of silver displayed at 
their table. Afterwards, in the same year, a law was passed bear- 
ing the name of C. Fannius,^^ one of the consuls, which restrained 
the expense of meals still more. On the greatest festivals no 
man was allowed to exceed an hundred ases, 6s. o^d. ; on ten 
other days in every month he might go as high as thirty ases, or 
Is. ll^d. ; and at all other times he was limited to no more than 
ten, about 7^d. of English money. By the same law,^'' also, the 
consumption of poultry, and all kinds of birds, was expressly for- 
bidden, with the exception of a single hen at each table, and this, 
it was added, must not have been regularly fatted. This was 
repeated as a favourite clause in all future laws on the same sub- 
ject ; and other articles of food were prohibited by successive 
enactments ; as for example, M. iEmilius Scaurus, one of the con- 
suls in the year 638, excluded dormice from the table,^^ which 
little animals the Romans, it appears, were accustomed to catch 
in great numbers, and regarded them when fatted as a peculiar 
delicacy. It is natural enough that men of small or moderate 
fortune, who could not indulge in the magnificence of splendid 
villas, numerous slaves, or costly furniture, should bear with 
great impatience these restrictions upon that peculiar §sratification 
which was to them most accessible; besides that, they looked 
upon any interference in such matters as an encroachment on 
their just liberty of doing what they chose with their own money. 
We find, accordhigly, that M. Duronius, one of the tribunes,^^ 
procured the rejection of a new sumptuary law brought forward 
about the year of Rome 656, to enforce the provisions of the law 
of Fannius. For this action Duronius was shortly after expelled 
from the senate by the censors M. Antonius and L. Flaccus ; and 
a sumptuary law was in fact carried by the consul P. Licinius 
Crassus,^" limiting the quantity of meat which might be brought 
to table on ordinary occasions, but still permitting an unrestricted 
consumption of vegetables. There is, in one of Cicero's letters,^' 
testimony to show that these regulations remained in force for 
many years, and that their intention was completely evaded by 

55 Gellius, IT. apnd Sigonium,Commen- 55 PHny, Histor. Natural. VIII. 57. 
tar. in Fast, et Triumph. 59 Valerius Maximus, II. 9. 

66 Macrobius, Saturnal. II. 13. Apud . 6" Aul. Gellius, II. 24. Apud Facciola- 
Facciolati Lexicon, in Voce " Fannia." tl in Voce " Licinius." 

67 Pliny, Histor. Natural. X. 50. 6I Epistol. ad Familiares, VII. ep. 26. 



85 JUST ADMINISTRATION OF MUCIUS IN ASIA. 

the arts of cookery, which found means to provide a luxurious 
and expensive meal out of the common productionsof the garden. 

In the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus, and Cn. Lentulus, 
is also dated a decree of the senate for the abolition of human 
sacrifices.®^ When the republic was engaged in any dangerous 
war, the superstition of the Romans believed that to bury alive in 
the midst of Rome an individual of the adverse nation, was a 
powerful charm to secure victory. This had been put in practice 
in the second Punic war ; and although now forbidden, was re- 
peated afterwards on more than one occasion till long after the 
tirst preaching of Christianity.^^ 

It is with pleasure that we are now called to contemplate two 
Just administration of ^are instauces of integrity and humanity: Q. Mu- 
a. Mucins m Asia. (>ius SccEvola, and P. RutiHus Rufus. Q. Scsevola 
filled the office of consul in the year of Rome 658, together with 
L. Licinius Crassus, so celebrated as an orator. On the expiration 
of the year he was appointed as proconsul to the government of 
the province of Asia,®* by which name the Romans meant to ex- 
press those countries on the western side of Asia Minor, which 
had formerly composed the kingdom of Pergamus. P. Rutilius 
attended him as his lieutenant,®^ and cordially co-operated with 
him in all his proceedings. He only held his command for nine 
months,®® but during that short period he so endeared himself to 
the people whom he governed by the equity of his administration, 
and by the firmness with which he protected them against the 
oppressions of the farmers of the revenue, that a festival was 
instituted in commemoration of his goodness.®'' and continued to 
be observed for many years afterwards in Asia ; while at Rome 
his name became identified with that of an upright and merciful 
magistrate,®^ and his conduct was long held up by the senate as 
a model which oflicers appointed to similar stations should dili- 
gently endeavour to copy. Q. Mucins was happy, moreover, in 
never being exposed to the malice of those whose interests had 
suffered from his pure and incorrupt government. But his lieu- 
tenant, P. Rutilius, was less fortunate. The judicial power, 
according to the law of C. Gracchus (which after a short inter- 
ruption had been lately put in force again by C. Servilius Glaucia), 
was, as we have stated, vested entirely in the equestrian order. 
This class of men was closely connected with the farmers of the 
revenue, and entered warmly into their complaints of the treat- 
ment which they had received from Mucins and Rutilius. Ru- 

62 Pliny, Histor. Natural. XXX. 65 Livy, Epitom. LXX. 

63 Pliny, XXVIII. 2. 66 Cicero, ad Atticum, V. ep. 17. 
6^ Livy, Epitom. LXX. Others place 67 Cicero, in Verrem, II. 21. 

his government of Asia about four years 68 Cicero, in Caecilium, 17. Valerius 
earlier, and say that he obtained the prov- Maximus, VIII. 15. 
ince as propraetor. 



CENSORSHIP OF DOMITIUS AND CRASSUS. 37 

tilius was accused of corruption in his province, 
perhaps by some of those very individuals whose ^™ °^^' ^"'''™' 
own corruption he had repressed, and was brought to trial before 
a court consisting entirely of citizens of the equestrian order. 
His conduct on his trial was consistent with the high principles 
of his general life. He refused to employ any celebrated orator 
in his defence,^^ nor would he suffer any attempts to be made to 
work upon the feelings of his judges. His friend, Q,. Mucins, 
spoke in his behalf, confining himself only to a clear and simple 
statement of the truth. But the tribunal which had so lately 
acquitted the guilty Aquilius, when defended by an appeal to his 
passions, now condemned a man of the most spotless innocence, 
who disdained any support but that of reason and j iistice. Rutilius 
was banished, and retired to Smyrna,''*' in the country which was 
the scene of his alleged corruption, but which was in truth the 
best witness of his virtue. The people whom he was accused 
of misgoverning, sent deputies from all their several towns to 
welcome his arrival once more amongst them ; nor did they show 
less respect to him in his exile than when invested with the au 
thority of a Roman officer.'^' The citizens of Smyrna gladly 
gave him the freedom of their city,'''^ and in this adopted home 
Rutilius spent in peace the remainder of his life ; nor could the 
solicitations of Sylla, when dictator, ever prevail with him to 
return to Italy. 

In the year of Rome 661 some curious particulars are recorded 
of the censorship of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus censorshipof oomi- 
.and L. Licinius Crassus. The study of eloquence tius and crassus. 
daily becoming more popular at Rome, there arose a number of 
persons who professed to teach it, and who opened schools for the 
instruction of young men in this accomplishment. Of these 
teachers some were Greeks, and if they only interpreted and ex- 
pounded the works of some of their distinguished countrymen, 
they must have communicated to their hearers much new and 
valuable knowledge. An acquaintance with the rhetoric of Aris- 
totle must have opened an unknown world to the mind of a young 
Roman, and have furnished him with innumerable subjects of 
thought, while it lead him to examine the motives of actions, and 
the causes of feelings ; while it embraced, with wonderful con- 
ciseness, the principles of almost every argument that could be 
used in all questions, judicial and political; and while with in- 
tuitive good sense it displayed the excellences to be aimed at, and 
the faults to be avoided, in the language and arrangement of a 
writer or an orator. But besides these Greek instructors, some of 
the Romans themselves professed to open schools of rhetoric ; and 

69 Cicero, de Oratore, I. 53. 'i Valerius Maximus, II. 10. 

70 Cicero, de Republica, I. 8. " Tacitus, Annal. IV. 43. 



88 CENSORSHIP OF DOMITIUS AND CRASSUS. 

being for the most part men of little education, and delivering 
their lessons probably on cheaper terms than the Greek teachers, 
their scholars consisted chiefly of the poorer class of citizens, and 
particularly, we may suppose, of those individuals who wished to 
qualify themselves for the part of noisy and factious leaders of 
the populace. It was on these grounds, as Cicero makes Crassus 
himself affirm, in the " Dialogue de Oratore,"" that the censors, 
in the exercise of their arbitrary power, thought proper to put a 
stop to the proceedings of the Latin teachers of eloquence ; be- 
cause, in the language of Cicero, " they could teach their pupils 
nothing but impudence," In the course of the year the two cen- 
sors are said to have had a very unbecoming quarrel with each 
other: the expensive habits in which Crassus indulged in his 
manner of living, appearing to his colleague to be unworthy of 
his censorian dignity. It appears, that Crassus had six date trees 
in his garden,^^ of remarkable size and beauty, which he valued 
very highly ; and four pillars of the marble of Mount Hymettus 
in his house,^^ a material which had not hitherto been used in 
any public building at Rome, and which, in a private house, was 
thought to argue excessive luxury. Another ridiculous charge 
was brought by Cn. Domitius against his colleague ; ^^ that he 
liad gone into mourning on the death of a favourite fish, which 
was kept in one of his fish-ponds. Crassus, we are told, confessed 
the truth of the story, saying, " that he had indeed wept at the 
loss of a fish ; but that Domitius had borne the loss of three wives 
Avithout shedding a tear." The history of Rome presents us at 
once with instances of the strangest extravagance of conduct in 
some characters, combined with a most complete intolerance of 
every thing eccentric, in the general feelings of the magistrates and 
the spirit of the laws. 

The succeeding year, in which Sextus Julius Cassar and L. 
Marcius Philippus were consuls, witnessed the 

A tJ C 662 A C 91 i- i- J 

origin of the Italian war. But as the parties formed 
on this occasion were not without their effect in the civil war that 
followed, and as Sylla took a distinguished part in the contest 
maintained by Rome against her revolted allies, we shall include 
our account of these transactions in the narrative of that indi- 
vidual's life, which we are now preparing to lay before our readers. 

" III. '24. 75 Pliny, Histor. Natural. XVII. 1. 

'< Pliny, Histor. Natural. XVII. 1. "6 Macrobius, Satumal. II. 11. 



CHAPTER V, 

PART I. 
LUCIUS CORNELIUS SYLLA.— PROM U.C. 616 A.C. 138, TO U.C. 666, A.C. 88, 

The Cornelian family was one of the most ancient and hon- 
ourable in Rome: and two of its branches, the From u. c. ese, a. c. 

, c c^ • • JT J. \ c -iixi ' 138, to U.C. 666, A.C. 

houses 01 ocipio and Lentulus, lurmshed the com- ss. 
monwealth with a long list of distinguished officers, in the several 
departments of state, A third. branch bore the surname of Ru- 
finus ; but although its members occasionally appear on the lists 
of magistrates, none of them, till a much later period, rose to any 
high personal eminence. In the second Punic war, in the year 
of Rome 540, P, Cornelius Rufinus, being then preetor, celebrated 
for the first time,' the Ludi Apollinares, or games in honour of 
Apollo, which the Sibylline books had directed the senate to 
institute ; and from this circumstance he is said to have changed 
his name of Rufinus, for that of Sibylla ;" which was afterwards 
corrupted into the shorter appellation of Sylla. His great grand- 
son was L, Cornelius Sylla, the subject of our present narrative, 
who was born about the year of Rome 616, in the consulship of 
M, ^milius Lepidus, and C. Hostilius Mancinus, four years before 
the death of Tiberius Gracchus, 

The father of Sylla did nothing to promote either the honour 
or the wealth of his family, and his son was born with no very 
flattering prospects, either of rank or fortune. "We know not by 
whom his education was superintended ; but he acquired, either 
from his instructors, or by his own exertion in afterlife, an un- 
usual portion of knowledge, and had the character of being very 
profoundly versed in the literature^ of the Greeks. But intellec- 
tual superiority affords no security for the moral principles of its 
possessor ; and Sylla, from his earliest youth,^ was notorious for 
gross sensuality, and for his keen enjoyment of low and profligate 
society. He is said to have lived in lodgings at Rome,^ and to 

» Livy, XXV. 12. 3 Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 95. 

2 Macrobius, apud. Facciolati Lexicon, ^ Plutarch, in SylM, 2. 
in Voce " Sulla." * Plutarch, in Sylla, 1. 



90 BIOGRAPHY— L. CORNELIUS SYLLA. 

have rented one floor of a house, for which he paid 3000 nummi, 
or about 24/. 45. 4^c?. a year : a style of hving which seems to 
have been reckoned disgraceful to a man of patrician family, and 
to have inferred great indigence. For his first advancement in life, 
he was indebted for the fondness of a prostitute, who had acquired 
a large sum of money, and left it all to him by her will ; and he 
also inherited the property of his mother-in-law, who regarded 
him as her own son. He was chosen one of the quaestors in the 
year of Rome 646, and accompanied Marius, then in his first 
consulship, into Africa ; where, as has been mentioned elsewhere, 
his services were very remarkable ; and it was to him that Ju- 
gurtha was at last surrendered by Bocchus, king of Mauritania. 
This circumstance excited, as it is said, the jealousy of Marius ; 
but Sylla^ nevertheless acted mider him as one of his lieutenants 
in the war with the Cimbri, where he again greatly distinguished 
himself But finding the ill-will of his general daily increasing, 
he left him, and served in the army of Lutatius Catulus, the col- 
league^ of Marius ; and in this situation, being charged with the 
duty of supplying the soldiers with provisions, he performed it so 
well, that the army of Catulus was in the midst of abundance, 
while that of Marius was labouring under severe privations. This 
still further inflamed the animosity with which Marius already 
regarded him. 

For some years after this period, Sylla seems to have lived in 
the mere enjoyment of his favourite pleasures of intellectual and 
sensual excitement. At length, in the year of Rome 657, he be- 
came a candidate for the office of praetor, but without success. 
He attributed his failure, according to Plutarch,^ to the disappoint- 
ment of the people at his not first suing for the sedileship ; it be- 
ing a long-established custom that the a3diles should exhibit 
shows of some kind or other for the amusement of the multitude ; 
and Simla's friendship with the king of Mauritania, seemed to 
promise that he ^"ould procure from Africa an unusual num- 
ber of lions and other wild beasts, to be hunted in the amphithea- 
tre. However, in the following year, Sylla was elected praetor, 
syiia obtains the pr.- without the provious stcp of going through the 
torahip. office of aedile ; and not to deprive the people of 

the gratification they expected, he exhibited no fewer than a hun- 
dred lions ; the first time, it is said, that the male lion^ Avas ever 
brought forward in the sports of the circus. On the expiration 
of his practorship, he obtained the province of Cilicia;'" and 
was commissioned to replace on his throne Ariobarzanes, king of 
Cappadocia, who had been lately expelled by Mithridates. This 

8 Velleius Paterculus, II. 17. '" Auctor de Viris illustribus, in Vita 

7 Plutarch, in Sylla, 4. Syll». Plutarch, in Syllti, 5. Livy.Epit. 

8 Plutarch, in Sylla, 5. LXX. 
» Pliny, Histor. Natural. VIII. 16. 



TRIBUNESHIP OP M. LIVIUS DRUSUS. 91 

he easily effected ; for Mithridates was not yet prepared to en- 
counter the power of Rome; and it is further men- His proceedings in his 
tioned, as a memorable circumstance in the life of p™^'"ce. 
Sylla, that while he was in Cappadocia, he received the first 
communication ever made to any Roman officer by the sovereign 
of Parthia. Arsaces, king of that country, perceiving that the 
Romans extended their influence into his neighbourhood, sent an 
embassy to Sylla to solicit their alliance. In the interview be- 
tween the Roman praetor and the Parthian ambassador, Sylla' ' 
claimed the precedence in rank, with the usual arrogance of his 
countrymen ; and by this behaviour, in all probability, left no very 
friendly feeling in the mind of Arsaces ; and rather encouraged 
than lessened that jealousy of the Roman power, which the Par- 
thians, in the sequel, were often enabled to manifest with more 
success than any other nation since the time of Hannibal. 

On Sylla's return to Rome, he was threatened with a prosecu- 
tion for corrupt proceedings in his province ;"^ but the matter was 
never brought to a trial. It is said also, that Bocchus, king of 
Mauritania, presented to the Romans about this time, a group of 
figures in gold, representing himself betraying Jugurtha into the 
hands of Sylla. This excited anew the jealousy of Marius, 
who is represented to have attempted in vain to hinder the figures 
from being received and dedicated in the capitol. 

We are now arrived at the memorable consulship of L. Mar- 
cius Philippus and Sextus Julius Csesar. Since consulship of l. pw- 
the death of Saturninus, the state of affairs at Rome Ji^P'^", ^""^ ^s'^- J"'- 
had been generally tranquil; and the accounts a.u.c. 662. 
given of this period in ancient writers, are proporfionably scanty. 
But to this calm a terrible storm was now to succeed ; and Rome, 
for the first time since the second Punic war, was to be engaged 
in a desperate contest in the very heart of Italy. It appears that 
the senate bore^^ with impatience the great power enjoyed by the 
equestrian order, in possessing the whole judicial authority in the 
commonwealth. To attack this formidable body, it was neces- 
sary that the senate should effect a coalition with the popular 
party, and court it by a series of popular enactments. M. Livius 
Drusus was at this time one of the tribunes ; the xribuneship of m. 
son of that M. Drusus, who had been one of the Livius orusus. 
colleagues of C. Gracchus in his tribuneship, and who had greatly 
undermined the popularity of Gracchus, by proposing, with the 
authority of the senate, laws even more grateful to the multitude 
than his. His son was now prevailed upon to act a similar part, 
and to bribe the people at almost any price to assist in the medi- 
tated attack upon the equestrian order. But Drusus was not of 

" Plutarch, in Sylla, 5. i3 Livy, Epitom. LXX. Velleius Pa-. 

S2 Plutarch, in Sylla, 5, 6. terculus, II. 13. 



92 LAWS OF M. DRUSUS. 

a temper to be the mere instrument of the designs of others. He 
is described as a man of great talents and great pride ; insomuch, 
that during his sdileship,'^ when one of his colleagues suggested 
something as beneficial to the state, Drusus scornfully replied, 
" What business have you to interfere in the affairs of our com- 
monwealth ?" and when he acted as qusestor in Asia, he disdain- 
ed the usual insignia of the office, as if his own personal dignity 
needed not any external marks of honour. In his tribuneship, 
he was willing to promote the popularity of the senate, but not 
so as to resign to it all the credit that his measures might acquire : 
he rather aspired to be, as it were, the moderator of the republic, 
to balance the claims of contending factions, and to secure to 
himself the respect and gratitude of all. The imperfect accounts 
of these times which remain to us, do not allow us to arrange 
the order of his proceedings with exactness ; but 
Laws of M. Drusus. -^ appears that he at first attempted merely to re- 
strain any abuse of power in those who filled the stations of 
judges, '5 by making them responsible for their verdicts, and liable 
to be tried, if there were any grounds for accusing them of cor- 
ruption. Three of the most eminent individuals of the eques- 
trian order, amongst whom we find the name of C. Maecenas, an 
ancestor of the famous minister of Augustus, opposed the law 
of Drusus in behalf of the whole body to which they belonged ; 
and their arguments, as recorded by Cicero,'^ are too remarkable 
to be omitted. They insisted that the Roman knights, in declin- 
ing to sue for those offices which might have raised them to the 
rank of senators, had deliberately sacrificed their ambition to 
their love of security ; that the high dignities which a senator 
enjoyed, were fairly compensated by his greater liability to have 
his conduct called in question ; while, on the other hand, the 
equestrian order, which was obliged by law to undertake the 
office of judges, ought not to be exposed to prosecution for the 
manner in which they discharged it. Strange as this reasoning 
appears to us, it was admitted as just at Rome : the plebeians 
fully sympathized with the knights, and they succeeded in rejecting 
the proposed law, and in repelling all inquiry into the conduct of 
the judges, however great might be the iniquity of their decisions. 
Thus baffled, Drusus had recourse to a stronger measure, and 
proposed to restore the law of Q,. Servilius Ca^pio, by which the 
judicial power had been divided between the senate and the 
equestrian order. By a curious coincidence, one of his warmest 
opponents was a sou of the very man in whose steps he was 
treading, Q,. Csepio."' Common report assigned a ridiculous 

" Auctor de Viris illustribus, in M. >« Pro Cluentio, 56. 
Druso. " Cicero, pro Doino, 46. Florua.IH. 

»5 Cicero, pro Rabir. Postumo, 7 ; pro 17. 
Cluentio, 56. 



OPPOSED BY Q,. C^PIO AND L. PHILIPPUS. 93 

cause to their mutual opposition, by tracing it back, opposed by a. csepio 

,- . -TJ^ '■' "Yi- 1 and L. Philippus, but 

in the first instance, to a dispute at a public sale are mostly carried. 
about a valuable gold ring, which each of them w^as eager to 
purchase. Personal motives may very possibly have added vir- 
ulence to their political differences ; but Q,. Caspio, as a member 
of the equestrian order, was naturally disposed to resist the mea- 
sures of Drusus ; and the same vehemence of temper, which in- 
duced him, on a former occasion, to defy the power of the tribune 
Saturninus, would lead him to take an equally prominent part on 
the side that he now espoused. The proposed law met v/ith 
another powerful antagonist in the consul L. Philippus. He 
seems to have been actuated by a settled feeling of opposition to 
the aristocracy ; as we have seen him, when tribune, eager to 
bring forward an agrarian law ; and now, as consul, he continu- 
ally, in his speeches to the people, inveighed against the senate'^ 
with the utmost severity. On the other hand, Drusus pursued 
his schemes with the overbearing violence to which the pride of 
his nature prompted him ; on one occasion, he threatened Csepio,'^ 
that he would order iiim to be thrown from the Tarpeian rock ; 
at another time, when Philippus was speaking against him in the 
Forum, he caused him to be seized and dragged to prison ; and 
when, from the tightness with which the officer grappled him, the 
blood burst forth from his nostrils, Drusus exclaimed, in allusion 
to the supposed luxuriousness of his manner of living, " that it was 
the pickle of his favourite fish." In order to further his views, he 
proposed a new corn law, and a law for the esta!)lishment of sev- 
eral new colonies, to conciliate the common people ; and to Avin 
the favour of the Italian allies, he renewed the hopes formerly 
held out to them by C. Gracchus and M. Fulvius Flaccus, of ob- 
taining the privileges of Roman citizens. The senate for a long 
time cordially supported him ; and this circumstance gave occa- 
sion to the violent speech of the consul, L. Philippus,'^" " That it 
was impossible for the republic to go on with such a senate." 
But at length their zeal in his cause began to cool : while he 
professed to defend their dignity, he almost pretended to act as 
their patron ; and on one occasion,^' when they sent for him into 
the senate house, he replied, " That the senate should rather adjourn 
to the Curia Hostilia," anciently used as the place of their meet- 
ings, " that so they might be near him while he was addressing 
the people, if they wanted him." It is said that the senate actu- 
ally complied with his proposal ; but such an instance of his 
pride must have taught it, that it was possible to buy too dearly 
its deliverance from the arbitrary power of the equestrian order. 
Meanwhile the laws of Drusus were successively carried : the 

18 Cicero, De Oratore, I. 7. 20 Cicero, de Oratore, III. 1. 

19 Auctor de Viris illustribus, in M. 21 Valerius Maximus, IX. 5. 
Druso. 



94 DRUSUS IS MURDERED, AND HIS LAWS REPEALED. 

judicial power was to be divided between the senate and the 
equestrian order ; new colonies were to be planted ; corn was to 
be sold at the rate fixed by the Sempronian law ; all the several 
parties whom Drusus had courted had received the benefits which 
he had promised them, excepting only the Italian allies. To ad- 
mitting them to the rights of citizenship, all orders in Rome were 
equally averse ; and they seemed likely to meet the usual fate of 
strangers who interfere in domestic quarrels, and whose interests 
are sacrificed to promote the reconciliation of the contending 
parties. But finding that Drusus was unable to satisfy their ex- 
pectations, and that nothing waste be looked for from the freewill 
of the Romans, they prepared to apply themselves to other mea- 
sures. A conspiracy is said to have been formed by the Latins'^^ 
to assassinate the consul, L. Philippus, whom they considered as 
one of their greatest enemies, while he was performing a sacrifice 
on the Alban Mount. Drusus, aware of their design, warned 
Philippus to provide for his own safety, and the plan was thus 
frustrated ; but the public mind throughout Italy was in the 
highest state of agitation, and every thing seemed to presage an 
impending contest. 

It was at this time, when all parties were united in their in- 
vectives against Drusus as the author of these dis- 
Drususismur ere . t^|p]jances, that ouo day, when he was returning 
home from the forum,'^^ encircled by an immense crowd of his 
followers, he M^as murdered at the door of his own house by some 
unknown assassin, who stabbed him, and left the knife sticking 
in his side. He was carried in immediately, and soon after ex- 
pired ; and such was the state of the times, that no inquiry was 
made to find out the murderer. But it was commonlj^ asserted 
that Q,. Varius Hybrida,'^* a vehement enemy of the senate, was 
the perpetrator of the crime. 

After the death of Drusus, the general feeling ran so strongly 
And his laws agaiust his measures, from the sense entertained of 

repealed. ]-,is criminal rashness in encouraging the claims of 

the Italian allies, that the senate now concurred with the consul 
Philippus in declaring all his laws invalid ;"^ grounding this de- 
cision on the authority of the consul, who was also one of the 
augurs, and who alleged that they had been passed without due 
attention to the forms of religion in observing the auspices. It is 
remarkable, that the law for the regulation of the judicial power, 
which the senate had so strong an interest in maintaining, was 
notwithstanding annulled, together with the rest ; as if the aris- 
tocracy had not dared to retain any benefit from tlie support of a 

22 Auctor de Viris illustribm, in M. 24 Cicero, He Nntuia Deorum, III. 33. 
Druso. ^ Cice;o, de Legibus, II. 6. 12. 

23 Velleiu3 Paterculus, II. 14. Cicero, 
pro Milone, 7. 



CONFEDERACY AND REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN ALLIES. 95 

man who was now considered as an enemy to his country by all 
parties equally. 

The allies, however, had not yet broken out into open hostili- 
ties when the new consuls, L. Julius Csesar and P. 

A TI P 6fi3 

Rutilius Rufus, entered upon their office. In the 
mean time the equestrian order having thus successfully repelled 
the attack made against it, resolved to follow up its victory, and 
to terrify its enemies by an unsparing exercise of that judicial 
power of which it had been vainly attempted to deprive it. A 
law was proposed and carried by Q. Varius Hybrida,^^ the reputed 
assassin of Drusus, and now one of the tribunes of the people, 
that an inquiry should be set on foot in order to discover what 
persons had given encouragement to the pretensions of the Ital- 
ians, and that all who had done so should be held guilty of a 
treasonable offence. This was a favourite method of annoying 
the nobility ; and we have seen it practised already with success 
at the beginning of the war with Jugurtha. The knights prom- 
ised themselves the same results from it on the present occasion. 
Accusations were brought against M. iEmilius Scaurus,^'' the 
first on the roll of the senate ; against M. Antonius,'^^ the famous 
orator ; against C. Cotta,^^ Q,. Pompeius, L. Memmius, and seve- 
ral others of the senators. But the majority of those whom we 
have named obtained their acquittal ; and the whole proceeding 
had little other effect than that of exasperating the Italians still 
further, when they saw that to have shown any encouragement 
to their petitions, was considered at Rome as a crime. Accord- 
ingly, the different cities of Italy^" entered into a secret league 
with each other, and began to make an interchange confederacy among 
of hostages. Their intrigues were first discovered the Italian states. 
at Asculum, a town of Picenum ; and Q. Servilius, with procon- 
sular authority, was sent thither to punish the oflenders. But not 
being supported by a sufficient military force, he provoked the 
inhabitants to proceed at once to open violence ; and they accord- 
ingly massacred him and his lieutenant Fonteius,^' together 
with all the other Roman citizens who happened to be found in 
Asculum. Immediately after the perpetration of j^^^^j^ „f ^j^^ „,,;,„ 
this outrage, the Italians with one consent flew to ^^'"'^■ 
arms : the Marsi,^*^ the Peligni, the Samnites, the Lucani, the 
Vestini, the Marrucini, the Picentes, the Hirpini. and the Japy- 
gians ; almost every nation in Italy, except the Latins, Tuscans, 
and Umbrians, took part in the confederacy. They fixed upon 
Corfmium as their seat of government,^' giving it the name of 

26 Valerius Maximus, VIII. 6. Appian, 3" Appian, de Bell. Civili, L 38. 
de Bell. Civil. I. 37. 3i Cicero, pro Fonteio, 14. 

27 Cicero, Fragm. Orat, pro M. Scauro. 32 Appian,!. 39. Livy, Epit. LXXII. 
23 Cicero, Tuscul. Dispui. II. 24. 33 Diodorus Siculus, Eclog. XXX VIl. 
29 Cicero, de Claris Orator. 56. 89. 



96 ANCIENT SYSTEM OF ALLIANCE BETWEEN 

Italicum ; and there a senate was formed out of the principal in- 
dividuals in the several states ; and two officers were elected with 
the title of consuls, to conduct the operations of the war ; each, 
in imitation of the practice of the Romans, having one-half of 
Italy assigned him as his province, and six generals, with the 
title of lieutenants, to act under his command. A deputation 
was sent to the Roman senate, representing the reasonable claims 
of the Italians to enjoy their share of the privileges of a city, 
whose greatness was in so large a proportion the work of their 
own courage and fidelity ; but an answer was returned with the 
usual spirit of the Romans, that no proposals would be received 
until the Italians should express contrition for their rebellion, and 
return to their obedience. Thus an end was put to all negotia- 
tion, and the war was commenced on both sides with the utmost 
vigour and animosity. 

That the reader may more fully understand the nature of this 
Of the nature of Quarrel, aud of the connexion which subsisted be- 

the ancient system . t-» i ^i t rf , ^ • r- -r ^ 

of alliance between twccu Romc and the diiierent nations of Italy, it 
welker power" ^ will be pi'opcr to refer to the history of an earlier 
period, and to notice that system of alliances between the stronger 
and weaker powers which is one of the most peculiar points in 
the political relations of antiquity. 

Nothing can be imagined more miserable than the condition 
of the weaker states, in those ages of barbarism which subsisted 
both in Greece and Italy long after the establishment of political 
societies or commonwealths. That superior power conferred a 
right of dominion, and that foreigners might be freely plundered, 
unless protected by some particular treaty, were two principles 
generally acted upon, and which exposed all small communities 
to the double evils of oppression from their neighbours, and of 
kidnapping and robbery from any one who had the means of oc- 
casionally reaching them. Their only resource was to form a 
connexion with some nation strong enough to defend them, and 
the protection of which they purchased by binding themselves to 
serve it faithfally in all its wars ; or, in other words, by surren- 
dering their national independence. Unhappily the system of 
Reasons why alliance govcmment whicli prcvailcd in those times led 

was preferred to a S ,, . ..,.-, , 

complete union. them to prcservc their municipal independence, 
and substituted the connexion of alliance for that of union under 
the same executive and legislative power. The origin of most of 
the cities of Greece and Italy resembled that of the European 
settlements in America ; they were the colonies of a more civil- 
ized people seating themselves in the country of barbarians ; and 
thus instead of freely naturalizing themselves and spreading over 
the face of the land, they advanced timidly and slowly beyond 
the walls of their first fortified habitation, and were accustomed 
to contract their feelings of patriotism within the limits of a single 



A STRONGER AND A WEAKER POWER. 9-7 

city. The spirit of a town is naturally somewhat republican ; 
men are thrown more completely together, they live in sight of 
one another, and all are readily summoned together to consider 
on any thing that may affect the common interest. Thus the 
principle of representation does not suggest itself to their minds ; 
where all can meet to consult for themselves, they are not likely 
to intrust others with the power of acting for them. In this man- 
ner it came to be considered as an axiom amongst the political 
writers of antiquity, that where any portion of liberty was en- 
joyed, there some points at least must be subject to the decision 
of the collective body of the people ; and even where property was 
made a qualification, and the poorest citizens were excluded from 
the public assemblies, still those who had a voice in the common- 
wealth always exercised it in their own persons collectively, and 
not through the medium of representatives ; and thus the national 
council, if so it might be called, was always a considerable por- 
tion of the whole population, and formed too large a body to be 
contained within the walls of a single building. This circum- 
stance rendered it impossible for the dependent allies of a state to 
become incorporated with it ; the inhabitants of many towns 
could not habitually meet together in one common assembly ; and 
the citizens of the capital, or seat of government, would then in 
effect hold in their hands an absolute sovereignty, over all the rest 
of the nation. Whereas, by retaining a municipal independence, 
the allied cities still enjoyed an entire freedom in their internal 
government, lived under iheir own laws, held in their own hands 
the administration of justice, and confined to themselves all offices 
of civil honour and emolument. But at the same time their in- 
terests were thus kept distinct from those of their protecting ally, 
they were regarded always as subjects and not as fellow-citizens, 
and were liable to have their property taxed, their trade shackled^ 
and their people called to serve as soldiers, whenever it suited the 
policy or pleasure of the sovereign state. 

The invaluable histories of Thucydides and Xenophon afford 
a complete picture of these alliances among the causes which placed 
Greeks ; and it is from these that we must derive head^fTnaiiiance^.^ 
our knowledge of the same system, as it was practised in Italy. 
We find that Rome,^^ so early as the first year of the common- 
wealth, was strong enough to act as the protecting ally of several 
small adjacent cities, among which Ardea, Antium, Laurentum, 
Circeii, and Tarracina, are particularly mentioned. They were 
thus secured against the descents which the Carthaginians often 
made on the coasts of Italy, for the purposes of plunder, and espe- 
cially of carrying off the inhabitants as slaves; for Rome being 
of importance enough to treat with Carthage, stipulated that all 

34 Polybius, III. 22. 



98 THE ALLIES WISH TO OBTAIN ROMAN CITIZENSHIP. 

her own dependent allies should Ve secured from molestation : 
but with regard to all the other cities of Latium, it was provided, 
that if the Carthaginians took any of them, they might carry off 
the people and the moveable property, but might not convert the 
towns into establishments or garrisons for themselves. Thus 
they were allowed to plunder all who did not put themselves 
under the protection of Rome : and this permission was doubtless 
intended to exalt the benefits of the Roman alliance in the estima- 
Their authority over tiou of the neighbouring states. In process of time 
theiraUies;i.inwar. tf^g Romaus fouud mcaus to iuclude all the nations 
of Italy in the number of their allies, and thus to place all the 
military force of the peninsula at their own disposal. They ac- 
tually were preparing to call it into action when the Gauls invad- 
ed Italy between the first and second Punic wars, and caused 
returns to be made to them of the whole number of citizens able 
to bear arms in the several states of their confederacy. ^^ In every 
war, the troops of the Italian allies formed one-half of the Roman 
army : they were levied by orders from the consuls,^^ who named 
the states from which the contingents were to be drawn, the 
number of them to be raised, and the time and place at which 
they were to be ready to put themselves under the command of 
the Roman generals. They had officers of their own," and their 
own paymasters, but these were entirely subordinate to generals 
appointed by the Romans to command them, with the title of 
prefects of the allies. The prefects had the power of punishing 
by fine or by flogging; and the consuls, as appears from a pas- 
sage in Sallust, to which we referred on a former occasion, might 
even condemn any of the soldiers of the allies to death. ^'* It is 
2. In peace. uiorc difficult to State exactly what was the power 

of Rome over the Italian nations in time of peace. Generally 
speaking, the Roman laws were not binding on the allies, unless 
they themselves chose to adopt them f^ but a large reservation 
was made of all such things as the Romans held to concern their 
dignity or prerogative, and in all these their decisions were of 
paramount authority to any municipal laws of their allies. , For ex- 
ample, it was held that the senate or people of Rome, or that any 
of their generals, might confer the freedom of Rome on any meri- 
torious individuals in the allied states,^" although it seems that 
the Italians viewed the exercise of this power with some jealousy, 
probably because they thought that it gave the Romans too great 
The allies are anxious ^^^ iiffiueuce amoug them. But with whatever 
i^ge"'"or'Roman''c.u; reluctaucc they might see the rights of Roman 
^^"^'''p- citizenship conferred on individuals amongst them 

by the patronage of Roman magistrates, the allies had long en- 

35 Polybius, II. 23,24. ss Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 69. 

3« Polybius, VI. 21. 39 Cicero, pro Cornelio Balbo, 8. 

37 Polybius, VI. 21. 26. 34. *° Cicero, pro Cornelio Balbo, 9. 



THE ALLIES WISH TO OBTAIN ROMAN CITIZENSHIP. 99 

tertained a wish to share universally in these rights, and to find 
the road open before them to the command of armies, to the ad- 
ministration of provinces, to a participation, in short, in all the 
dignities and emoluments so largely enjoyed by the citizens of 
Rome. The Latins, or at least some states among them, possessed 
indeed the right of voting in the Roman assemblies ; but it ap- 
pears that they were all comprehended in one of the Roman 
tribes,* ' and could influence consequently no more than a thirty- 
fifth part of the whole number of voters ; so that there was little 
inducement for them as a body to interest themselves in the busi- 
ness of the forum. The rest of the Italians did not enjoy even 
so much political consequence as this ; and both were alike inca- 
pable of being elected to any magistracy at Rome, or to any mili- 
tary command in the provinces. It is no wonder, therefore, that 
they bore with impatience such a state of exclusion : and a 
modern reader may be surprised that their efforts were directed 
towards obtaining a closer union with Rome, rather than towards 
asserting their complete independence ; and he may think it 
strange also, that the Romans should have risked the very exist- 
ence of their commonwealth, rather than adopt a measure which 
promised to strengthen it by the accession of so large a number 
of citizens, whose interests would from henceforth have been 
identified with that of Rome. But the allies on their part consid- 
ered, that if they became independent, they would lose the fruits 
of all those conquests which they had so laigely helped the Ro- 
mans to acquire. Instead of being a sovereign nation, exempted 
from taxes, and deriving a large accession of wealth every year 
from its subject provinces, they would have relapsed into the con- 
dition of poor and petty republics, none of which had any claim 
to become a centre of union to the rest, while their separate 
strength would have been utterly incompetent to withstand the 
power of Rome, by which, long before it had reached its present 
eminence, they had already been successively overwhelmed. On 
the other hand, the pride of the Romans induced them to revolt at 
the notion of raising their inferiors to the rank of their equals. 
The senate besides, by admitting so many new competitors, di- 
minished each individual senator's prospects of obtaining honours 
and emoluments : the equestrian order dreaded, lest their exclu- 
sive possession of the judicial power should be invaded, or their 
profits, as farmers of the taxes, wrested from them by the competi- 
tion of some of the wealthy ItaHans ; whilst the bulk of the people 
were unwilling to lessen the value of their votes in the public as- 
sembly by extending the right of suflrage so largely. All parties 
in the commonwealth, trusting to the well-known discipline of 
the Roman armies, to the superior experience of their gen3rals, 

" Livy, XXV. 3. 



1 00 ITALIAN WAR-FIRST CAMPAIGN. 

and to the usual dissensions and weaknesses of confederacies, re- 
solved to hazard the issue of a war, not without the hope, perhaps, 
of establishing their power over their allies on a firmer basis, and 
silencing for ever all their claims to a participation in the rights 
of Roman citizenship. 

Accordingly, the two consuls, L. Julius Caesar and P. Rulilius 
The Italian war. First Rufus, took the field, ha viug uudcr them as their 
oampaign. Ueutenaiits, all the officers of the highest reputation 

in the commonwealth.^^ Under Rutilius were employed C. 
Marius, who seems to have rested in inactivity since the sedition 
of Saturninus ; Cn. Pompeius, the father of Pompey the Great ; 
Q,. Servilius Caepio, who had made himself conspicuous by his 
opposition to M. Drusus, during his late tribuneship ; C. Perpenna 
and Valerius Messala. Under L. Caesar, were Licinius Crassus, 
P. Lentulus, Titus Didius, and L. Sylla. These several officers 
acted in their different quarters against the generals of the con- 
federate Italians ; but as we have no account of the war written 
by a contemporary, or by a military historian, we know not what 
were the plans for the compaign on either side ; and the reports 
which we possess, contain little more than an unconnected list of 
battles and sieges, devoid alike of information and of interest. It 
is mentioned that the consul, L. Caesar,^ ^ was joined by an aux- 
ihary force of Gauls and Numidians ; but that the latter were ren- 
dered useless to him, by an able expedient of the Italian 
commander, C. Papius. Oxyntas, a son of the famous Jugurtha, 
had been detained a prisoner in Italy since the death of his father, 
and now falling into the hands of Papius, was by him invested 
with the ensigns of royalty, and studiously presented to the sight 
of his countrymen in the consul's army. Numbers of them im- 
mediately deserted to him, looking upon him as their king ; and 
L. Caesar, suspicious of those who remained, was obliged to send 
them back into Africa. 

In the first year of the war, the Romans" met with some se- 
vere losses: the consul, P. Rutilius, and Q,. Csepio, one of his 
lieutenants, were, on separate occasions, defeated and slain. L. 
Postumius, one of the praetors, was killed at Nola ; and that town, 
which had been so faithful to Rome in the second Punic \var, 
now fell into the hands of the Samnites. Several other cities 
were either taken by the Italians, or were encouraged to join their 
cause of their own accord ; and towards the close of the year, the 
Umbri and the Tuscans showed evident signs of their intention 
to follow the general example. This last danger seemed so 
alarming, that the Romans were driven to avert it by concession ; 
and they passed a law, admitting all the Italians who had continued 

« Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 40. ^^ Appian, de Bell. Civil. 43,44. Livy, 

« Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 42. Epitom. LXXIII. 



SECOND CAMPAIGN. JQI 

faithful to Rome, to the rights of citizenship.^^ This fixed the 
Latins to their cause, and stopped the Tuscans from revolting as 
they had meditated ; the Umbri, however, probably not being 
aware of it in time, actually joined the confederates. Yet, al- 
though Rome had thus been obliged to concede in some measure, 
her strength in the field had been too resolutely and successfully 
exerted, to allow the enemy to calculate on the speedy attainment 
of his object by force of arms. Sylla and Marius had obtained a 
great victory over the Marsi ;^® L. Caesar had defeated the Sam- 
nites ; and Cn. Pompeius, having obtained some advantage over 
the Picentes, was enabled to lay siege to Asculum. On the other 
hand, the Romans were so pressed for want of soldiers, that they 
enlisted even freed men into the' legions ;*'' and as their victories 
had been fully counterbalanced by defeats, it became evident that 
concessions must be made ; and the difficulty consisted in disarm- 
ing the resentment of the enemy without seeming to be actuated 
by fear, to yield the point in dispute without sacrificing the na- 
tional honour. 

The military events of the next campaign tended, however, 
in a great degree, to preserve the reputation of the second campaign. 
Romans, and enabled them to extricate themselves ^-^^ ^•^^*- 
without degradation from this alarming war. L. Porcius Cato, 
and Cn. Pompeius Strab'o, were chosen consuls ; and the latter 
brought the siege of Asculum to a triumphant issue,''^ an event 
which was peculiarly welcome to the Romans, as that town had 
set the first example of revolt, and had accompanied it with the 
massacre of two Roman officers, and a number of Roman citizens. 
Cn. Pompeius gained also a victory over the Marsi, and reduced 
that people, together with the Vestini, Peligni, and Marrucini, to 
make a separate peace. Possibly, some intimation was given 
them, that the object for which they were contending would be 
granted them on their submission ; for we find that the states 
which first withdrew from the confederacy, were rewarded by re- 
ceiving the right of citizenship immediately. The seat of gov- 
ernment of the Italians was now removed from Corfinium to 
^sernia,^* in the country of the Samnites ; that bold people re- 
solving to continue the struggle as obstinately as their ancestors 
had done in the days of Pontius and Papirius Cursor, But they 
had to contend with one of the most formidable of the Roman 
generals, in the person of Sylla, whose exploits in this second 
campaign had raised him to the highest distinction. The 
forces under his command were increased early in the season,^" 

« Appian,49. ^8 Livy, Epitome, LXXV. LXXVI. 

^9 Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 46. Livy, « Diodorus Siculus, Eclog. XXXVII. 
Epitome, LXXIII. LXXIV. 5» Livy, Epitome, LXXV. Plutarch. 

^T Appian, de Bell. Civil. 49. Livy, in Sylla, 6. 
Epitome, LXXIV. 



102 END OF THE ITALIAN WAR. 

by a mutiny which took place among the troops of A. Postumius 
Albinus, another of the consul's lieutenants. That officer, being 
suspected of treason, was murdered by his own soldiers, who then 
joined themselves to the army of Sylla ; nor did he scruple to 
receive them, but observed, " that they would only fight the 
better, in order to atone for their crime." Thus strengthened, he 
took and destroyed the town of Stabise,^' in Campania, defeated 
a large army with immense loss near Nola, reduced the Hirpini to 
subjection, and then, invading Samnium, defeated the Samnite gen- 
eral, Papius Mutilius, with severe loss in the field, drove him into 
^sconia, and attacked and took the town of Bovianum. These 
successes encouraged him to offer himself as a candidate for the 
consulship ; for which purpose, towards the end of the campaign, 
he returned to Rome. 

A circumstance, which is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus,^* 
Mithridates refuses to scrved, lu all probability, as a powerful inducement 
assist the Italians. ^q ^\^q Rouiaus, to rcward the submission of the 
Italians as early as possible with the privileges which they so 
earnestly desired. It appears that the confederates had applied 
for aid to Mithridates, king of Pontus, whose power and ambition 
were now disposing him to enter into a contest with the Romans. 
Either his pride, or his want of sufficient information, dictated to 
him his most ill-judged answer, and led him to commit a fault in 
policy, which the ability and vigour of all his afterlife could never 
repair. He told the Italians, that he would lead his armies into 
Italy as soon as he had secured the dominion of Asia Minor. But 
the fortune of his intended allies could brook no delay ; and a 
bare suspicion of so formidable an accession to their enemy's 
force, would dispose the Romans to hasten their measures of con- 
EndoftheitaUan ciliatiou. Accordiugly, the Italian war vanishes 
w"- almost instantaneously from our notice ; one state 

after another submitted, and received in return the gift of Roman 
citizenship ; and after the close of the second 3^ear of the contest, 
we only find some faint sparks remaining of the vast conflagration 
which had so lately involved all Italy. Nola still refused to yield f^ 
and the relics of the Samnites and Lucanians were yet in arms, 
either in their own countr)^, or in the extremity of Bruttium, al- 
most in the same quarter where Hannibal had so long maintained 
himself under circumstances nearly similar. 

The war which we now have been recording, was undertaken 
Its connexion with for a definite and intelligible object, and naturally 
3ho!i1a"be"obsened cudcd wlicu that object was attained. But as it 
had sprung out of the internal dissensions of Rome, so it was lost 
in them again ; and the different interests which had been en- 
s' Pliny, riistoria Natural. III. 5. Ap- 53 Velleius Paterculus, II. 17. Diodo- 
pian, I. 50, 51. rus Siculus, Eclog. XXXVII. 

Si Eclog. XXXVII. 



CONSULSHIP OP SYLLA AND POMPEIUS. 103 

gaged in it, although no longer the leading points in the civil 
wars that followed, yet became easily connected with the respec- 
tive parties, and served to prolong and exasperate their quarrel. 
It is here that we again deeply feel the want of a contemporary, 
or a sensible historian, to guide our researches. Reduced to con- 
nect, as well as we can, the facts incidentally mentioned by the 
writers whom we are obliged to follow, and forced to supply, often 
by conjectures, the chasms in their most unsatisfactory narratives, 
we can only hope at best to present our readers with an imperfect 
picture, and may be forgiven if it be in some respects even an 
erroneous one. The name of Marius has scarcely occurred to 
our notice in the second campaign of the Italian war ; whereas 
the services of Sylla were most eminent. We have seen that 
Sylla went to Rome to stand for the consulship, and gyjig^ ^ candidate for 
the prospect of his attaining that dignity was most the consulship. 
galling to the jealousy of Marius; especially as a war with 
Mithridates now appeared certain, and if a general of Sylla's 
reputation filled the office of consul, his claims to the command 
of the army employed in the contest would prevail over all others; 
C. Julius Csesar, and Q,. Pompeius, were the two consulship of L.syiia 
other candidates; the former of whom could not A.u.c.eS!'""^' 
legally offer himself," as he had never gone through the previous 
office of praetor, and on this account his election was vigorously 
opposed by P. Antistius and P. Sulpicius, tribunes of the people.. 
Sulpicius was one of the ablest orators of his time,^^ and had 
lived in habits of familiarity with L. Crassus, with M. Antonius, 
and particularly with the late tribune, M. Drusus. He is intro- 
duced by Cicero as one of the speakers in the dialogue " de Ora- 
tore," and is said to have been regarded by the elder part of the 
nobility, as a man likely to be one of the best supporters of the 
aristocratical cause. One of his first public acts was the accusa- 
tion of C. Norbanus,^^ for a riot and sedition in his tribuneship, . 
and this was considered as a favourable omen of his future at- 
tachment to the laws and to good order. His opposition to the illegal; 
pretensions of C. Caesar gained him great popularity,^^ without 
any prejudice to his character in the opinions of the nobility ; but 
it appears that the favour with the multitude, which he had thus 
honourabl]^ gained, accompanied, perhaps, with an excessive con- 
fidence in his own talents as a speaker, excited in his mind a 
fatal ambition, and led him to tread in the steps of the Gracchi, of 
Saturninus, and of his friend Drusus, in assuming Rise, character, and 
the character of a popular tribune. Other circum- ffine slfpicius. ^ 
stances may have contributed also to the same effect : he had a 
violent personal quarrel with Q,. Pompeius,^^ who, together with 

5* Cicero, de Claris Oratoribus, 62. 56 Cicero, de Oratore, II. 21. 48. 

55 Cicero, de Claris Oratoribus, 49. 55. 57 Cicero, de Hauruspic. Respons. 19. 
De Oratore, I. 7. 21. 58 Cicero, de Amicitia, 1. 



104 PROCEEDINGS OP THE TRIBUNE SULPICIUS. 

Sylla, proved the successful candidate in the consular election ; 
and he had, perhaps, already formed that connexion with Marius, 
which his subsequent conduct so clearly discovered. The measure 
which he principally endeavoured to carry, seems to have been 
a favourite one with all the popular leaders since the days of 
Tiberius Gracchus ; and Sulpicius, in the course of his intimacy 
with Drusus, probably learned to regard it with peculiar attach- 
ment. This was an unlimited communication of the right of 
citizenship to all the inhabitants of Italy ; a project essentially 
popular in its principle, as it tended to render the government less 
exclusive ; and which, though abhorred by the aristocracy, and 
viewed with jealousy by a large portion of the people at large, 
possessed notwithstanding great attractions for the very lowest 
class of citizens,^^ as well as for the turbulent and enthusiastic 
of all classes ; for not only was it recommended by being of a 
spirit entirely democratical, but it was obvious that the indiscrim- 
inate admission of all the Italians to the privilege of voting at 
Rome, would greatly lessen the influence of the richer class of 
Rom.an citizens, and by rendering the assembly of the people so 
immoderately numerous, would in fact reduce it to little better 
than a mere mob, the ready tool of an eloquent and an ambitious 
leader. Nor had the late grant of citizenship to the allies entirely 
satisfied their wishes ; for in order to prevent them from exercis- 
ing a power in the comitia proportionate to their numbers, they 
had been all admitted into eight only of the thirty-five tribes ;®" 
and as all questions were decided by a majority of tribes, and not 
of individual votes, their weight in the assembly was still much 
less than they thought themselves entitled to claim. Accordingly, 
Sulpicius now professed himself the advocate of their complete 
equality with the natives of Rome, and proposed that they should 
be admitted into all the tribes without distinction. Finding his 
project resisted by the aristocratical party, he became only more 
violent in his proceedings ; he knew that if it became a question 
of physical force, his partisans were likely to prevail, provided 
only that he could give them organization as well as numbers, to 
prevent them from being seized with a panic in the time of danger, 

59 The history of the Catholic question ferment was over, they have not liked their 
in our ovt'n times will greatly illustrate the leaders the less for continuing to be its ad- 
account given in the text. The cause of vocates. Thus Drusus may be said to have 
the Catholics has been espoused by the fallen a sacrifice to something; like the out- 
popular party, because the principle of cry of " No Popery ;" yet Sulpicius, only 
abolishing laws of exclusion, and lender- two years afterwards, could tread in hia 
ing all men equally eligible to a share in steps, not only without forfeiting the affec- 
the government, is in itself a popular one. tions of ilie people, but as if the side of 
Yet considerations of danger or loss to the question which he espoused were the 
themselves from the consequences of the one which a popular leader would naturally 
measure, have often strongly influenced adopt. 

the multitude to oppose it, and to inveigh ^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 20. 
against its supporters ; although, after the 



THE COMMAND OF THE ARMY TRANSFERRED. 105 

and leaving him personally exposed to the fate of the Gracchi 
and of Saturninus. He prepared, therefore, a body of three thou- 
sand gladiators,®' whom he kept always about him ; and he is said, 
besides, to have been attended by six hundred young men of the 
equestrian order, whom he called his anti-senate. While we start 
at such a systematic defiance of the forms of a regular govern- 
ment, we should remember that acts of outrage and violence were 
not confined to the popular party ; for only two years before this 
time, a riot had been excited by a class of men necessarily re- 
moved far above the mere rabble,®*^ those who had large debts due 
to them ; who had assaulted and murdered A. Sempronius Asellio, 
one of the praetors, in open day, because, in his judicial capacity, 
he had issued some decrees for the protection of insolvent debtors. 
In the meantime, news arrived that Mithridates had actually 
attacked and overrun the Roman dominions in Asia Minor. War 
was, therefore, declared against him at Rome ; and Asia and Italy 
being named as the provinces of the consuls, the latter fell to the 
lot of Q,. Pompeius,®^ r^^id the former to that of Sylla. The army 
which Sylla was to command, was at this time employed near 
Nola, as that city still refused to submit to the Romans ; but he 
himself remained in the city with his colleague, endeavouring to 
baffle the projects of Sulpicius, by proclaiming frequent holy-days, 
and'ordering consequently a suspension of public business. But 
Sulpicius,''* on one of these occasions, attacked the consuls with 
his armed force, calling upon them to repeal their proclamation 
for the festival ; and on their refusal a riot ensued, in which Q. 
Pompeius escaped with difficulty to a place of concealment, his 
son was killed, and Sylla, finding himself in the power of his 
enemies, complied with their demands, and annulled his late edict. 
Then, unwilling to expose himself to similar insults, he instantly 
left Rome to join the army. Sulpicius carried his favourite measure, 
and the Italian allies were placed by law on a footing of perfect 
equality with the Romans in the right of voting. 

Sylla had already shown that he possessed none of the vir- 
tuous courage of Metellus, who had preferred ban- suipicius procures the 
ishme'nt to compliance with the illegal demands of Te^tmldlolctlgS 
the popular party in the time of Saturninus. It ?finSedfromsyiil 
was soon to appear that he resembled that excellent 'oManus. 
citizen as little in the readiness with which he had sacrificed his 
own interests and dignity, rather than endanger the peace of his 
country. Marius was now to reap the advantage which he had 
proposed to himself from his connexion with Sulpicius, and from 
the late triumph of the Italian allies. It should be recollected, 
that he had supported the interests of the Italians in the tribune- 
si Plutarch, in Mario, 35 ; in Sylla, 8. 63 Appian, 55. 

62 Livy, Epitome, LXXIV. Appian,!. 6^ Appian, de Bello Civili, I. 56. Piu- 
54. tarch, in Sylla, 8. 



106 SYLLA MARCHES TOWARDS ROME. 

ship of Saturninus, and that he in return relied upon their devotion 
to him in promoting his views of ambition. His own low birth, 
his want of education, and the inherent coarseness of his char- 
acter, had prevented him from ever blending cordially with the 
aristocracy ; he was besides himself a native of a countr^^ town, 
Arpinum, and could have no invincible prejudices in favour of the 
exclusive possession of power by the inhabitants of Rome. Ac- 
cordingly, soon after the admission of the Italians into all the 
tribes, a law was passed in the comitia, by which the people 
transferred the command of the army, destined to act against 
Mithridates, from Sylla to Marius f^ and two military tribunes 
were sent to notify this change to Sylla. His soldiers are said to 
have been as indignant as himself at this decree : they had been 
fighting for two campaigns against the revolted Italians ; and 
now the enemy whom they had vanquished in the field, had ac- 
quired an ascendency in the councils of the state, and would 
probably deprive them, as well as their general, of the spoils and 
honours which all anticipated from an Asiatic war. The violence 
of the comitia was imitated in the camp ; the two military tri- 
bunes were murdered,^^ and the' army, consisting of six legions, 
syUa marches immediately broke up from its quarters, and began 
towards Rome. ^q niove towards Rome. But it is said," that 
almost all the superior officers, unwilling to fight against their 
country, resigned their commands, and hastened to escape into 
the city. 

In retaliation for the murder of the two military tribunes, 
several of Sylla's friends were murdered by the popular party at 
Rome. The senate was completely overawed ; and none of the 
many illustrious persons whom it contained, are recorded as 
making any attempt to mediate between the parties, or to prevent 
the violence that was impending. Sylla was joined, meantime, 
by his colleague, Q. Pompeius, and the two consuls continued to 
advance, disregarding the repeated deputations that were sent to 
stay their march. At last, when they were already in the neigh- 
bourhood of Rome, they received a final address, entreating them, 
in the name of the senate, not to approach within four miles of 
the capital.^^ Sylla pretended to comply, and gave the usual 
orders to measure out the ground for his camp, on the spot on 
which the deputation had met him. But while his antagonists 
were thus throwii ofi" their guard, he sent off a detachment to fol- 
low close after the returning deputies,®* and to occupy one of the 
gates of the city. This was effected ; and he and his colleague, 
putting themselves instantly in motion with the main arni}^, and 
stationing troops on several quarters of the town, proceeded to 

65 Velleius Paterculus, II. 18. Appian, ^^ Appian, 57. 

55 S3 Appian, 57. Plutarch, in Sylla, 9. 

66 Plutarch, in Sylla, 9. *' Plutarch, in Sylla, 9. Appian, 58. 



MARIUS AND SULPICIUS DECLARED TRAITORS. iQT 

force their way into the streets. Marius and Sulpicius, having in 
vain tried to strengthen their cause, by inviting the slaves to join 
them with a promise of freedom, attempted for a time to resist 
with such a force as they had been able to raise and arm, and 
with the aid of many of the inhabitants, who annoyed the assail- 
ants with stones and arrows, from their houses. But Sylla, without 
scruple, ordered his men to set fire to the quarters from whence 
they were thus annoyed, and at the same time prepared to assail 
the city in an opposite direction, at once to distract the plans of 
the defenders, and to menace them with cutting off their retreat. 
Then it was that Marius, Sulpicius, and their prin- Assaults and takes 
cipal friends, gave up the contest, and consulted for ^^^ '^''y- 
their safety by flight ; whilst the conquerors, halting in the Sacred 
Way, took instant measures for securing their victory, punished 
severely some of their soldiers,^" who were beginning to plunder, 
stationed guards in the most important positions, and were on the 
alert the whole night to prevent any new disorders, or any further 
hostile attempts on either side. 

On the following morning the Romans, for the first time since 
the invasion of the Gauls, awoke to the sight of a victorious ene- 
my in possession of their city. Sylla proceeded to assemble the 
senate, and proposed that Marius,''' Sulpicius, and their adherents 
should be declared public enemies, and a price set Darius and suipicius 
on their heads. A decree was passed accordingly are declared traitors. 
to that efiect, and Sulpicius being betrayed by one of his slaves, 
was put to death by the consul's orders, and his head exposed 
upon the Rostra. Marias, after a series of romantic adventures, 
succeeded in escaping from his pursuers, and sought a refuge for 
the present in Africa, so that the popular party, deprived of its 
leaders, and controlled by the presence of a military force, sub- 
mitted without resistance to the storm. What measures were 
taken by Sylla to secure the power of the aristocracy for the future, 
it is difficult to decide •,'^^ nor is it material, for they were all reversed 
in the counter-revolution that immediately followed. The laws 
of Sulpicius were, as might be expected, declared invalid ; and 
the ItaUans were thus again debarred admission into more than'' 
eight of the tribes. But the Epitomi^er of Livy tells us," that 
Sylla at this time planted several colonies, in order, as we may. 
suppose, to reconcile some of the poorer citizens to his party ; and 

'•'> Appian, I. 59. the senate ; and that the senate itself was 

■'■' Appian, 60. Cicero, de Claris Ora- swelled by the nomination of three hun- 

toribus, 45. dred new members from the different orders 

■'^ Appian says, that he restored the old of the state to be placed on its rolls. But 

custom of voting by centuries instead of the reality of such important changes must 

tribes ; that he revived the practice that not be admitted on the sole authority of 

nothing should be submitted to the deci- such a writer as Appian. 
sion of the people, unless it had first passed ^s Epitome, LXXVII. 



108 POMPEIUS IS MURDERED BY HIS SOLDIERS. 

Election of cinna and he SO abstained from interfering in the elections, that 
tep' '° '*'" "*"■ L. Cornelius Ciima, a man notoriously devoted to 
the popular interest, was chosen consul for the following year, 
together with Cn. Octavius, a partisan of the aristocracy. It is 
said that he bound Cinna''^ by the most solemn oaths not to dis- 
turb the order of things which he had established ; a precaution 
so little likely to be of any avail, that we may almost wonder that 
Sylla should have adopted it. In fact, no sooner did Cinna come 
into office, than he began to declare his real sentiments, and in- 
duced one of the tribunes to threaten Sylla with a prosecution for 
his late violent assault on the city and usurpation of the govern- 
„ „ ., . , , . ment." It is probable that Sylla now saw too late 

Sylla sails with his '^'^ i i t i • i i • 

army lo Greece. \^Q^y incomplete and shortlived was the victory that 
he had gained ; still, secure of the attachment of his army, he 
trusted that the senate might be able to maintain their own cause 
till he should return in triumph from Asia; and to. prevent all 
chance of again being deprived of his command, he at once left 
Rome, rejoined his soldiers, whom he had some time before sent 
back to Campania, and then proceeded without delay to sail with 
them into Greece, there to check, if possible, the alarming career 
of Mithridates. 

His colleague in the consulship, d. Pompeius,'^^ had been also 
confirmed by the senate in his appointment to the command of 
the army which was still kept on foot to oppose the remnants of 
the Italian confederacy. He accordingly set out for the quarters 
of the troops, which were at this time in the country of the Marsi. 
But Cn. Pompeius, the general whom he was going to supersede, 
considered the possession of an army too valuable to be easily 
relinquished ; and the soldiers, at his instigation, as is stated in 
. . ' all our accounts of these times, murdered their in- 

Q,. Pompeius \s mur- ^ . 

dered by his soldiers, tended couimauder as soon as he arrived among 
them. Cn. Pompeius thus retaining his station, aspired perhaps 
to act the part of Sylla, and to become like him the defender of 
the senate against the enemies who were preparing to assault it ; 
but it was not decreed that his crime should be so successful ; 
and the author of an act, unexampled till now in the Roman 
history, was not permitted even to reap that poor renown which 
attends on prosperous wickedness. 

74 Plutarch, in Sylla, 10. ''^ Appian, 6.3. Velleius Paterculus, II. 

75 Plutarch, in Sylla, 10. Cicero, de 20. Livy, Epitome, LXXVII. 
Claris Oratoribus, 48. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PART II. 

LUCIUS CORNELIUS SYLLA— PROM U.C. 666, A.C. 88, TO U.C. 677, A.C. 77. 

The former triumphs of the aristocratical party over the Gracchi, 
and over Saturninus, had been followed by some Fromu.c. ees. a.c. 
years of comparative calm. But the popular cause ss, tou.c.677. a.c. 
had now gained an accession of strength, more fenewar'JJf^'dfs'turi)^ 
fatally, indeed, to its adversaries than beneficially ^"'^^^■ 
to itself, in the support of ambitious and powerful men^who hoped 
to turn its successes to the advancement of their own greatness. Be- 
sides this, the Italian war, while it had filled Italy with armies, had 
degraded the quality of the soldiery : for, in the distress of the 
state, the Romans had enlisted freedmen into the legions ; and 
this, combining with the example already set by Marius of ad- 
mitting men to serve without any qualification of property, had 
rendered the troops readier instruments of the personal schemes 
of their generals. The Italians also, by coalescing with one of 
the great divisions of the Roman commonwealth, might hope for 
more complete success than when they had struggled against the 
united force of the senate and the people. Added to all this, the 
late violence of Sylla, although professing to be no more than a 
necessary retaliation of preceding outrages, yet furnished those 
who had suffered from it with abundant excuses for a new reaction 
on their part ; while the proscription of Marius, after the signal 
services he had rendered to his countiy, exasperated not only his 
own numerous friends, but a large body of independent citizens, 
who forgot the associate of Sulpicius, and remembered only the 
conqueror of the Cimbri. 

Immediately, therefore, on the departure of Sylla from Italy, 
L. Cinna again brought forward the law of Sulpi- cmna proposes to re- 
cius, ' which admitted the Italians into all the thir- pfcius, a^dmitting the 
ty-five tribes without distinction. Those whom tifbe".^ '"° "^ 
this law was intended to benefit crowded to Rome in great num- 
bers, to support its author by their swords rather than by their 

1 Velleius Paterculus, II. 20. 



XIO CINNA IS ASSISTED BY THE ITALIANS. 

votes. If we may believe Appian,'^ hardly a shadow of any con- 
stitutional form of proceeding was observed ; and no sooner had 
some of the tribunes of the aristocratical party interposed their 
negative to stop the passing of the law, than a violent riot broke 
out, and the lives of the tribunes were threatened. Upon this, 
Cn. Octavius, the other consul, broke into the forum with an 
armed force, and drove out the rioters, great numbers of whom 
were killed by his followers in their flight, but, as we are told, 
without his orders. Thus far the scene resembles the seditions 
of the Gracchi ; but Octavius was of a mild and scrupulous tem- 
per, and had left the principal offender untouched ; and Cinna, 
being fully prepared for the last extremities of civil discord, be- 
gan to summon the slaves to his standard, in the hope of main- 
taining his ground in the capital. But finding himself disap- 

Heis driven from poiutcd, ho fled ftom tho clty with his chief parti- 

Rome, and deprived ^ J ii i T- J. r J.1 -J. 1 •^^ 

of the consulship. saus, and the senate, by an act ot authority, hith- 
erto unprecedented, declared that he had forfeited the consulship ;3 
and the people being called on to proceed to a new election, L. 
Cornelius Morula, the Flamen of Jupiter, Avas appointed consul 
in his room. 

The Italian towns, regarding the cause of Cinna as their 
Is assisted by the itai- owu, reccivcd him with the utmost cordiality,* and 

ians, and gains over n-L^i' ^ j • ^ i i \.t • 

a Roman army. oncouragcd by their support, and assisted by their 
supplies of money, he presented himself at the camp of the army, 
which still, it seems, was employed in the neighbourhood of Nola. 
Here, by bribes and promises, he persuaded the soldiers to ac- 
knowledge him as their lawful consul, and to take the military 
oath of obedience to him; and having thus secured a rallying 
point for his partisans, he was soon joined by many individuals 
of the popular party from Rome. But his most powerful auxilia- 
ries were the different cities of Italy,' who, thinking that now 
they had a fair opportunity of resuming the contest with Rome 
under happier auspices, exerted every nerve in the cause, and not 
only furnished Cinna with money, but took up arms with such 
spirit and unanimity to join him, that he was able in a very short 
time to form an army of thirty legions, amounting at the least to 
a hundred and fifty thousand men. Already, too, Cinna had in- 
vited Marius and the other exiles of the popular party to return 
to their country,^ and Q,. Sertorius and Cn. Carbo were actually 
holding commands in his army. Hoping, therefore, to imitate the 
example of Sylla, he moved immediately with his forces towards 
Rome. 

The senate had no hopes of withstanding this assault by the 

2 De Bellis Civilibus, I. 64. s Appian, 67. Paterculus, 20. 

3 Velleius Paterculus, II. 20. ^ Plutarch, in Sertorio, 5. 
* Appian, 66. 



PROGRESS OP THE CIVIL WAR. 1 1 1 

mere efforts of the citizens of the capital. They t^^ gg,,^^^ ^ppjy ^^ 
required the support of a regular army/ and im- cn. pompeiusforaid. 
plored Cn. Pompeius, who, as we have seen, still retained his 
command in Umbria, to employ his soldiers in their defence. 
But he, more anxious to make the troubles of his country an oc- 
casion of his own advancement, remained for some time in sus- 
pense, as if waiting to see which party would purchase his ser- 
vices at the highest price, and thus allowed Cinna and his faction 
to consolidate their force beyond the possibility of successful re- 
sistance. Marius in the meanwhile landed in Tuscany with a 
small body of adherents,^ and studiously retaining ji„ij,g lands in itaiy 
all the outward marks of wretchedness and poverty and joins cinna. 
in his person and dress, he appealed to the compassion of the 
people by contrasting his present miserable condition with his 
former triumphs and dignities. He is said to have raised by 
these arts a body of about six thousand men, and to have effected 
his junction with Cinna, so that their combined forces were capa- 
ble of being divided into four distinct armies,^ with two of which 
Cinna and Carbo took up their positions on both sides of Rome ; 
while Sertorius, with a third, stationed himself so as to command 
the navigation of the Tiber above the city ; and Marius, with a 
fourth, was master of the course of the river below, between 
Rome and the sea. 

In this state of things Cn. Pompeius at last resolved to espouse 
the cause of the senate, and marched tOAvards progress of the dvii 
Rome. A battle was fought between his army and ^^'^• 
that of Cinna, immediately under the walls of the capital :'" but 
though the slaughter was great, the event seems to have been in- 
decisive, and soon afterwards Cn. Pompeius was killed by light- 
ning in his own camp. Both parties were suffering severely 
from the attacks of sickness, and this probably suspended their 
operations ; while Marius was employed in destroying several of 
the towns in the neighbourhood of Rome," from whence the city 
might have been supplied with provisions ; and a detachment oc- 
cupied Ariminum to intercept the reinforcements which the senate 
hoped to receive from Cisalpine Gaul. One hope still remained 
to the aristocracy. Metellus Pius, the son of that Metellus Nu- 
midicus, whose name, combined as it is with the recollection of 
his virtues, is a beautiful contiast to those which we must now 
so often mention, was at the head of an army in Samnium, and 
was still carrying on hostilities against the people of that coun- 
try, who, with hereditary obstinacy, even now kept alive the last 
sparks of the Italian war. He was desired by the senate to make 

7 Livy, Epitom. LXXIX. Appian, I. 9 Livy, Epitome, LXXIX. Appian,67. 
67. Paterculus,21. lo Paterculus, II. 21. Appian, 68. 

8 Appian, 67. Plutarch, in Mario, 41. " Appian, 67, 68. 



112 CINNA AND MARIUS ENTER ROME. 

the best terms in his power with the Samnites,'^ and to hasten 
to the rehef of his country. But either some difficuUies occurred 
in the negotiation, or the conditions which he granted were not 
so favourable as to prevent the popular leaders from turning his 
retreat out of Samnium to their own advantage. Marius 
promised to give the Samnites every thing which they required ; 
and accordingly they instantly joined his cause, defeated a Roman 
officer whom Meiellus had left behind him to watch their move- 
ments, and added their whole strength to that already overpow- 
ering confederacy by which the aristocracy of Rome was as- 
saulted. 

The defenders of the old constitution, under the command of 
Octavius the consul, and Metellus,'^ had established themselves 
on the hill of Alba, and still presented a force which might have 
encountered any one of the enemiy's armies with a fair hope of 
victory. But the generals dreaded to expose the whole nobility of 
the commonwealth, with their wives and children, to the conse- 
quences of a decisive defeat ; besides this their soldiers could not 
be fully depended on, for many of them preferred Metellus to 
Octavius,'^ and entreated him to take the supreme command ; 
and when he refused, and desired them to submit to the consul, 
who was their lawful general, they went over in crowds to the 
enemy. The very uprightness, indeed, of the aristocratical lead- 
ers, contributed to the present success of their adversaries. 
Whilst Cinna was seducing the slaves to join him by promising 
them their liberty, Octavius refused to follow the example, de- 
claring that he would not imitate that conduct which he had him- 
self denounced in his antagonist as treasonable. Thus the con- 
sular army was continually diminishing by desertion, without 
being able to repair its losses ; and the enemy had now establish- 
ed so strict a blockade, that the mass of the people were alarmed 
at the prospect of a famine, and impatient of a longer continuance 
of this hopeless struggle. 

Deputies were accordingly sent to Cinna by the senate to treat 
Cinna and Marius en- of peacB.'^ But lic iusistcd ou kuowiug whether 
ac'ees: A. C.86. they were going to treat with him as consul, or as 
a private individual ; and this difficulty broke off the negotiation 
for the moment. But the desertion from the city to the besieging 
army daily increasing, the senate were obliged to yield ; they con- 
sented to acknowledge Cinna as consul, and only requested him 
to swear that he would shed no blood after his victory. He re- 
ceived the deputies with all the state of a consul,'^ and refusing 
to take any oath, merely promised that he would not willingly be 
the author of any executions. But what little comfort the depu- 

'2 Appian, 68. Livy, Epitome, LXXX. '^ Appian, 69. 

i3Appian,69. 's Appian, 70. Plutarch, in Mario, 43. 

w Plutarch, in Mario, 42. 



MASSACRES IN ROME BY ORDER OF MARIUS. ^13 

ties might have derived from this assurance was destroyed by the 
sight of Marius, who stood silently beside the consul's chair, and 
whose savage glances, rendered more fearful by the assumed 
wildness of his face and the meanness of his attire, betokened 
nothing but executions and massacres. Metellus had in the 
meantime withdrawn from Alba, and retired towards the north of 
Italy;"' but Octavius, partly actuated by a courageous sense of 
duty, partly trusting to the solemn assurances of safety which he 
received from Cinna and Marius, and partly led away by his 
prophets and soothsayers, who foretold that he should suffer no 
injury, and to whose predictions he was habitually too ready to 
listen, refused to quit his station, and still continued to wear the 
ensigns of his office, and to show himself in public in the city. 
Cinna had already entered the walls, and disguise being no 
longer needful, he sent a party of soldiers to murder his colleague. 
Octavius quietly waited their approach, refusing either to fly or 
to conceal himself; the assassins executed their task, and the 
head of this blameless consul was, by Cinna's orders, suspended 
over the rostra, as the first victim to his vengeance. 

Rome, with every thing that was most noble and most distin- 
guished within its walls, now lay at the mercy of the popular 
leaders. But Marius professed, that as he had been declared an 
exile by the people,'^ he could not enter the city till his sentence 
should be regularly repealed : and the tribes were summoned in 
mockery, that their votes might enable their conqueror to avail 
himself of his own victory. His thirst of blood, however, could 
not brook the delay which he had devised to enhance the delight 
of his triumph ; and when two or three of the tribes had voted, 
he took possession of one of the gates, and entered the town at 
the head of a band peculiarly attached to his own person, and 
which consisted chiefly of the peasants or fugitive slaves who 
had joined him on his first landing in Tuscany. With these in- 
struments he proceeded at once to the work of mur- Mass^acres in Rome 
der. The principal nobility were selected as his by order of Marius. 
victims. Some fell by their own hands to anticipate the stroke 
of their assassins ; some were betrayed, and dragged from their 
places of concealment to death ; some were discovered and slain 
in the houses where they had sought refuge ; and others were 
butchered in the open streets, and gratified Marius with the sight 
of their agony. In the midst of this carnage, the wretches who 
were employed in it added to its horrors by all varieties of unau- 
thorized crimes of their own devising. Fugitive slaves availed 
themselves of the opportunity to murder their masters,'^ to plun- 
der their houses, and to commit the worst outrages on their fami- 
ly Appian, 80. Plutarch, in Mario, 42. " Appian, 74. 
18 Plutarch, in Mario, 43. 



114 MASSACRES IN ROME BY ORDER OP MARIUS. 

lies. The wife and children of Sylla were happy enough to 
escape this fate;*^" though they were especially sought after ; they 
were concealed by some of their friends until means were found 
to convey them out of the city. That their property should have 
been confiscated, that all Syila's laws should have been repealed, 
and himself declared, in his turn, a public enemy, seemed only 
the natural retaliation of a party which had so lately suffered at 
his hands a similar treatment. But the general scene of lawless 
rapine and murder which was every where exhibited, as it far ex- 
ceeded any thing which Rome had hitherto witnessed, so it was 
far too dreadful to be palliated by any plea of former provocations, 
and has deservedly procured for those who were its actors, the 
unmitigated abhorrence of all posterity. 

In this massacre there perished by the orders of Cinna and 
Marius, L. Julius Cassar,^' who had been consul during the Ital- 
ian war, and had distinguished himself by a splendid victory 
over the Samnites ; together with his brother, C. Julius Csesar, 
whose ill-advised competition for the consulship had first provok- 
ed Sulpicius to enter on his career as a demagogue,, and was now 
visited with death by the unforgiving jealousy of Marius. The 
heads of both these victims were exposed over the rostra ; and 
near them was seen the head of M. Antonius,^*^ the most eloquent 
citizen in the commonwealth, who had filled the offices of consul 
and censor, and Avho was respected as the able defender of all 
who applied for his aid in the courts of justice. His place ot 
concealment was betrayed to Marius,^^ who, although he was 
then at supper, was on the point of starting up from the table, to 
be himself a witness of his death ; but being restrained by his 
friends, he sent a party of soldiers instantly to destroy him, and 
bring back his head with them. P. Crassus,^^ the father of M. 
Crassus the triumvir, who had also, like M. Antonius, been both 
censor and consul, being now marked out for destruction, and 
having seen one of his sons murdered, killed himself C. Nurai- 
torius and M. BaBbius,^^ ]3olh apparently men of some considera- 
tion, and the latter a name that occurs frequently in earlier 
periods of the Roman history, were murdered, and their bodies 
ignominiously dragged through the forum by the common execu- 
tioners. These, with many others, were sacrificed by mere mili- 
tary exccntion to the first fury of the victorious leaders. But 
against L. Cornelius Merula, who had been appointed consul 
when Cinna was driven from Rome, and against Q,. Lutatius 
Catulus, the colleague of Marius in his fourth consulship, and his 
companion in his great victory over the Cimbri, it was resolved 

20 Plutarch, in Sylla, 22. Appian, 73. -^ Appian, 72. 

21 Cicero, De Oratore, III. 3. Tuscu- 2i Cicero, de Oratore, III. 3. Livy, 
Ian. Disputat. V. 19. Epitome, LXXX. Florus, III. 21. 

22 Cicero, de Oratore, III. 3. 25 Florus, III. 21. 



SICKNESS AND DEATH OP MARIUS. H^ 

to proceed with something of the forms of justice. Their con- 
demnation they well knew was the necessary consequence of 
their trial : Morula, therefore, preferring to die by his own hands, 
opened his veins, '^^ and as his blood flowed upon the altar of Ju- 
piter, he, in his character of Flamen, imprecated the vengeance of 
his god upon the head of his murderers. Catulus, it appears, 
had actually co-operated with Sylla in procuring the expulsion 
of Marius and Sulpicius," and causing them to be declared pub- 
lic enemies. For this, Marius was bent upon his death, and an- 
swered every solicitation in his behalf by saying, " He must 
die ;"^^ upon which Catulus, like Morula, to avoid falling by the 
executioner, shut himself up in a close room, and suffocated him- 
self by burning charcoal. 

Often as the leaders of a popular party have made the interests 
of their followers subservient to their own ambition, yet never was 
this more shamelessly exemplified than in the behaviour of Cinna 
and Marius. After having plunged their country into a civil war, 
under pretence of supporting the just claims of the Italians to an 
equal share in the right of suffrage, the chiefs of the victorious 
party would not, or could not, rely on the gratitude of those 
whose cause they had upheld ; nor would they allow the people 
to exercise the form of an election, even when they could have so 
certainly commanded the result. Cinna and Marius, by their 
own authority, declared themselves consuls for the ensuing 
year f^ and it is mentioned of the latter, that on 
the very day on which he entered upon his usurped 
office, he ordered a senator, of the name of Sextus Licinius, to 
be thrown from the Tarpeian rock. The atrocities, indeed, which 
Marius was daily committing, and the excesses in which his band 
of fugitive slaves indulged themselves without remorse, at last 
awakened the shame or the jealousy of his associates. Cinna, 
instigated, as it is said, by Sertorius,^" who beheld with indignation 
the crimes with which his party had disgraced themselves, find- 
ing all attempts to repress these disorders fruitless, assembled a 
body of his Gaulish auxiliary troops, and attacking Marius's 
band in their quarters by night, put the whole of them to the 
sword. Such an act was likely to have exasperated Marius 
against his colleague, had he been capable of revenging the af- 
front ; but his career was fast drawing to a close : sickness and death of 
he was now in his seventieth year, and plunging u.*c."668. a. c. ss. 
deeply into the utmost intemperance in his manner of living,^' 
he contracted a pleurisy, of which he died after a short illness, 
having enjoyed his seventh consulship for only seventeen days. 
It was reported that he became delirious before his death, and 

26 Velleius Paterculus, II. 22. 29 Livy, Epitome, LXXX. 

2T Appian, 74. 3" Plutarch, in Sertorio, 5. Appian, 74. 

^ Cicero, Tuscul. Disputat. V. 19. 3i Plutarch, in Mario, 45, 46. 



116 CINNA REMAINS MASTER OF THE GOVERNMENT. 

imagined himself to be commanding the army against Mithri- 
dates, which had so long been the object of his ambition, often 
shouting aloud, and expressing by the most violent gestures the 
liveliness of the impression which occupied his mind. But what- 
ever were the scenes which accompanied his last hours, they 
could scarcely add any thing to the certain horror of a sudden 
death thus cutting him olf amidst the perpetration of so many 
and such dreadful crimes ; nor are any stories of his late remorse 
and agony of mind required to aggravate our abhorrence of a life 
which, in the course of seventy years, presents an unvaried pic- 
ture of evil passions, darkening more and more as he advanced 
in age, and growing to the deepest intensity of blackness as he 
approached the latest period of his earthly existence. 

It is mentioned by Cicero,^^ that during the celebration of the 
funeral of Marius, C. Fimbria, a man whose ungoverned violence 
in speaking and in acting amounted sometimes almost to insanity, 
caused an attempt to be made on the life of Q.. Mucins Scaevola, 
one of the most virtuous citizens of his time. The assassin only 
wounded his intended victim ; and Fimbria, when he heard that 
Scsevola had escaped, declared that he would bring him to trial 
before the people. He was asked what charge he could possibly 
invent against a character so pure as Mucins ; to which he re- 
plied, " I shall accuse him for not having given my dagger a more 
hearty welcome." Such w^ere the wretches whose crimes were 
now enjoying a full impunity in the triumph of the professed 
champions of the cause of liberty. 

After the death of Marius, L. Cornelius Cinna remained in 
cinnaremains master fact the sovercigu of Romo. His powcr was little 
of the government, jggg absolutc than that afterwards held by Sylla or 
Caesar ; and it is somewhat remarkable that his usurpation should 
have been so little noticed by posterity, and that he himself 
should be so little known, that not a single trait of character, and 
scarcely a single personal anecdote of him is to be found on 
record. His first step was to supply the vacancy in the consul- 
ship occasioned by the death of Marius ; and for this purpose he 
fixed on L. Valerius Flaccus,^^ who had been the colleague of 
Marius in his sixth consulship, about fourteen years before. The 
massacres had now, for the most part, ceased ; and it was in- 
tended that the usual forms of the constitution should still be ob- 
served. Nothing, indeed, appeared to dispute the power of the 
victorious leaders : many of the nobility had left Italy,^^ and 
sought a refuge in the camp of Sylla ; some had retired to their 
estates in the country, and some still remained in Rome, anxious 
above all things to avoid participating themselves in a civil war, 

32 Oral, pro Roscio Amerino, 12. ^ Paterculus, 23. Plutarch, in Poin- 

ds Appian, 75. Paterculus, 11.23. pcio, 6. 



SYLLA REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE GOVERNMENT. 117 

and hoping that they might still possess influence enough to pre- 
vent the return of such a calamity altogether. In this last class 
we find the names of Q,. Mucins Sc8evola,^5 of another L. Valerius 
Flaccus, and of L. Philippus, the famous antagonist of Drusus, 
and notorious, during his consulship, for his opposition to the in- 
terests of the senate. But the usual freedom of speech allowed 
in the forum and in the courts of justice was so much abridged, 
that Cicero describes the three years which followed the victory 
of Cinna, as a period in which the republic was without laws and 
without dignity.^'' He himself remained during all this time at 
Rome," and was employing himself in the study of eloquence 
and philosophy ; attending the lectures of Philo, then a refugee 
from Athens, and of Molo of Rhodes, and preparing himself at 
leisure, during this cessation of opportunities for actual practice, 
for the splendid career which the subsequent triumph of the aris- 
tocracy laid open to him. 

The scanty reports of these times which remain to us, will as- 
sist but little in ascertaining the state of the people at large under 
the dominion of Cinna. An immense military force was kept on 
foot throughout Italy ; so that even if the Romans were exempted 
from all share in its support, the burthen must still have pressed 
heavily on the Italians, in addition to the numerous excesses which 
troops, so little subject to discipline, would naturally commit in the 
districts in which they were quartered. In Rome itself there was 
a large proportion of debtors among the lower orders, who were 
insolvent either through poverty or dishonesty. To relieve them, 
was judged a measure becoming a party professedly popular ; and 
L. Flaccus, the consul, brought in a law,^^ allowing a debtor to 
avoid all further claims upon him, on payment of a fourth part of 
his debt. It is one of the most difficult problems in legislation, to 
observe a just balance between severity to unavoidable distress, 
and indulgence to wilful extravagance or fraud ; but at Rome, 
in this case, as in so many others, the scale vibrated from one 
extreme of injustice to the other ; and the monied interest, who a 
short time before had murdered a lawful magistrate, because he 
had defended the poor against their oppressions, now saw Iheir 
just rights sacrificed in return, because the government wished to 
conciliate the needy and the desperate. 

Meanwhile, the several provinces of the empire submitted, as 
far as appears, without opposition to the party which syiia refuses to ac- 
prevailed in the capital. Sylla alone remained an emZentIt Romr" 
object of fear and jealousy. Far from seeking to disarm his 
enemies by concession, he is said continually to have avowed his 
intention of punishing them,^^ so soon as he should have finished 

35 Cicero, ad Atticum, VIII. epist. III. ^8 Velleius Paterculus, II. 23. 

^ Cicero, de Claris Oratoribus, 62. ^' Paterculus, II. 24. 

3T De Claris Oratoribus, 89. 



118 CONSULSHIP OF CINNA AND CARBO. 

the war with Mithridates ; and his confidence in his army was 
so well grounded, that he had no fears of their allowing any other 
general than himself to he appointed to command them. L. Flac- 
cus, indeed, was sent into Greece Avith a new army/" as the ofiicer 
intrusted by the people with the conduct of the war ; but he, not 
venturing to interfere with Sylla, who was at this time wintering 
in Thessaly, moved through Macedonia, and from thence crossed 
over into the northern parts of Asia Minor, to attack Mithridates 
in his own country. Here, however, he was soon assasinated by 
C. Fimbria, who had accompanied him from Rome as his lieuten- 
ant, and whose daring wickedness gladly caught at this opportu- 
nity of advancing himself On the death of Flaccus, he succeeded 
to the command, and carried on hostilities against Mithridates 
with some success ; but when Sylla, having recovered the whole 
of Greece, crossed over himself into Asia, and there soon con- 
cluded a peace with the enemy, Fimbria was summoned to sur- 
render the authority which he had unlawfully acquired ;^ ' and 
finding his soldiers yielding to the ascendency of Sylla's reputa- 
tion, and inclined to desert him, he, to avoid the punishment which 
he deserved, killed himself 

The death of Fimbria, however, did not take place till after the 
period at which we are now arrived. To resume, then, the regular 
course of our narrative, we must go back to the conclusion of the 
year 667, when the time was arrived for the appointment of consuls 
cinna associates car- for the year following. Cinna again re-elected 
ron"ukwp?aild'"pre^ hlmsclf by his own authority,^" and chose as his 
pares for war. colleaguc, Cu. Papirius Carbo, a man whose very 

name was ominous of evil ; for of the two individuals of his fam- 
ily who had hitherto been most conspicuous, one had, through his 
perfidy, embroiled the republic in a quarrel with the Cimbri, and 
had sustained from them a severe defeat in Illyria ; and the other 
was deeply involved in the mischievous plans of the Gracchi, and 
when brought to trial, as has been already mentioned, by L. Cras- 
sus, the orator, poisoned himself through fear of the sentence of 
his judges. The consuls, thus self-appointed, began to prepare 
themselves for the approaching contest with Sylla : they endeav- 
oured to conciliate the rich by showing them unwonted attentions ; 
they appealed especially to the Italian states, of whose interests 
they always professed themselves the advocates ; and endeavoured 
to secure the coasts of Italy against the expected invasion, by col- 
lecting a considerable fleet from the different ports of Italy and 
Sicily. 

In this interval of suspense, a motion was made and carried 
in the senate, by L. Valerius Flaccus,^ ^ that deputies should he 

40 Appian.de Bell. Mithridatico, 51. 52. ^^ Appian, de Bell. Civil. I. 75, Livy, 
Paterculus, II. 24. Epitom. LXXXIII. 

41 Appian, de Bell. Mithridat. 59. <3 Liyy, Epit. LXXXIII. Appian, 77. 



MUTINY OP THE SOLDIERS— CINNA IS KILLED. i^g 

sent to Sylla, to prevent, if possible, the evils of war ; and Cinna 
and Cavbo were desired to suspend their military preparations, till 
the answer to this embassy should be received. The consuls 
promised compliance, and the deputies were sent over into Greece 
to treat with Sylla ; but Cinna could not consent thus easily to 
relinquish the sovereignty he had gained, nor to treat on equal 
terms with an enemy whom he had injured beyond all hope of 
reconciliation. Once more, therefore, he re-appoint- 
ed himself and Carbo to the consulship ]^* and both ^' ^'^^^' ^' ^'^^' 
leaders then left Rome, and began themselves to press the levies 
•of soldiers, intending no longer to rcinain on the defensive, but to 
cross the Adriatic in person, and to anticipate Sylla in beginning 
hostilities. But it seems that they had not a fleet sufficient to 
transport at one passage a force strong enough to maintain itself 
against the enemy. They resolved, therefore, to send over their 
troops in successive detachments from the neighbourhood of An- 
cona, to the opposite coast of Liburnia, a spot so distant from the 
intended scene of operations, that the whole army might be safely 
landed, before Sylla could arrive to attack it. But the high repu- 
tation of the general against whom they were to act, rendered the 
soldiers very averse to the expedition : one detachment, after it 
had set sail, was driven back by a storm ; and no sooner did the 
men find themselves again on Italian ground, than they deserted 
their standards, and returned to their several homes. This exam- 
ple decided the rest of the army, and they all refused to embark. 
Cinna called them together, and endeavoured to enforce obedience. 
They crowded round him with minds prepared for the last ex- 
tremities ; and when one of his lictors struck a soldier, in order to 
clear the way, the blow was returned by the man's comrade : 
Cinna called out to seize the offender ; a general mutiny broke 
out at the word, stones were cast at him, and the Mutiny of the soldiers, 
soldiers who where nearest, drawing their swords, •'^^"'^'^cinnaiskiii- 
immediately stabbed and killed him. Carbo at once saw that the 
project of crossing the Adriatic was hopeless ; he recalled the few 
men who had already effected their passage, and resolved to con- 
fine his care to the defence of Italy. The death of Cinna, however, 
and the avowed disposition of the soldiers, encouraged the ordina- 
ry magistrates of the commonwealth to resume somewhat of their 
lawful authority. Carbo was summoned by the tribunes to return 
to Rome, and to hold the comitia for the election of a consul in the 
room of Cinna.^5 jje obeyed ; but on the first day that the comitia 
were held, the auspices were unfavourable : and on the next, the 
meeting was broken off" by a thunder storm, so that the augurs 

« Appian, 77, 78. Paterculus, II. 24. « Appian, 78. 
Livy, Epitom. 83. Auctor de Viris illus- 
tribus, in Vita Cinnae; 

9 



120 CARBO REMAINS SOLE CONSUL. 

carbo remains sole foi'bade the electioii to take place till after the sum- 
<"°n5'^- mer solstice ; and Carbo thus remained sole consul. 

About this time, the answer of Sylla to the deputation of the 
senate was received in Rome.*^ It stated that he would lay aside 
his purpose of invading Italy, if all those citizens whom Cinna had 
outlawed, were restored to their country and their honours. The 
senate, we are told, was disposed to accept these conditions ; but 
the influence of Carbo and his party procured their rejection, and 
war now appeared inevitable. Some months, however, intervened, 
before Sylla commenced his expedition to Italy ; and this delay 
was occasioned, in part, by an illness which attacked him,''" and 
which obliged him to go to ^Edepsus, in Euboea, to try the effect 
of the warm baths, for which that place was celebrated. Here he 
passed considerable time, amusing himself with the society of 
actors,^^ and of those persons, then so common in Greece, who lived 
upon their several talents of disputation, of eloquence, of wit, or of 
buffoonery. But he might console himself for this interruption to 
his plans, by reflecting that the party of his antagonists was by no 
means rising in the public opinion, and that his own friends on 
the contrary were dailj^ becoming more numerous ; while the fate 
of Cinna sufficiently showed, that he was in no danger of being 
anticipated in his schemes of invasion, and of finding himself 
obliged to act on the defensive in the country which he now oc- 
cupied. 

In the meantime, Q,. Metellus Pius,^^ who, in conjunction with 
Octavius, had unsuccessfully opposed Cinna and Marius in their 
attack upon Rome, and who, since their victory, had been living 
in one of the provinces in obscurity, now endeavoured to raise 
again the standard of the aristocratical party, and to obtain pos- 
session of the province of Africa. His attempt, however, was 
unfortunate ; he was repulsed by C. Fabius, the praetor, and from 
thence retired to Liguria, there to wait for a better opportunity of 
renewing the contest. The senate, though greatly overawed, was 
yet not entirely subservient to Carbo ; for it is said that he was 
prevented by them from demanding hostages of all the towns and 
colonies of Italy ,^'' as a security against their supporting Sylla. 
But in other points the interest of the popular leaders visibly pre- 
vailed. The right of voting was solemnly conferred, by a decree 
of the senate, on all newly admitted citizens, of whom the late 
war had given birth to a considerable number, not consisting of 
the inhabitants of the states of Italy, but of enfranchised slaves or 
foreign soldiers, who had flocked to the the standard of Ciima and 
Marius, and had contributed to their triumph. These had not 

« Livy.Epitom. LXXXIV. " Livy, Epitom. LXXXIV. Appian, 

" Plutarch, in Sylla, 26.. Strabo, L 56, 80. 
«t IX. 487, edit. Xyland. s" Livy, Epitom. LXXXIV. 

« Plutarch, in Sylla, 26. 



CONSULSHIP OP SCIPIO AND NORBANUS. 121 

only the right of voting now given to them^^ (whereas, before 
they only enjoyed the personal liberties of Roman citizens), but 
they were, moreover, allowed to be enrolled indiscriminately in 
all the tribes ; that important point which, in the case of the 
Italians, had been so warmly contested, and which, in fact, had 
furnished Cinna with his first pretext for disturbing the public 
peace. In addition to these acts, a decree of the senate was also 
passed, commanding all military officers in every part of the em- 
pire to disband their forces. That Sylla should obey this order, 
was scarcely to be expected ; but Carbo probably hoped, by its 
apparent fairness, to throw upon him the odium of being the chief 
obstacle to peace, and of disobeying that body, whose authority 
he professed to respect so highly. 

The year of Carbo's consulship now drew to an end ; and as 
he could not, or would not, procure his own re- consulship of scipio 

. , , , 1 ■*■ I /-N TVT and Norbanus. 

appointment, two new consuls were chosen, O. JNor- u.c. %m. 
banus, and L. Cornelius Scipio. We are not informed what cir- 
cumstances could have connected the latter, a member of one of 
the noblest families in Rome, with the party of Carbo ; or whether, 
indeed, he may not have been chosen by the most moderate citi- 
zens, as a man who might temper the violences of the times ; and 
have been tolerated by the popular party, on account of his want 
of the vigour and ability which might have made him dangerous 
to them. But C. Norbanus was a consul such as Carbo might 
have most desired. We have already noticed his seditious tri- 
buneship, during which, at his instigation, a riot broke out at the 
trial of Q,. Ceepio, and the condemnation of the prisoner was pro- 
cured by actual force. For this crime, he was accused by P, Sul- 
picius,^^ who was destined, at no remote period, to tread in his 
footsteps ; and was defended by M. Antonius, whose murder, 
some years afterwards, might have been justified by the very argu- 
ments which he himself, on this occasion, taught the people to 
approve. It was against these consuls that Sylla now led his 
army from Greece. All his preparations were completed, his 
health was fully re-established, and the devotion of his troops had 
been just proved, by their taking an oath to abide by him when 
they should be landed in Italy ,^' and by their offering to raise 
among themselves a supply of money for his use. With soldiers 
so attached to him, and inured as they were to war, his force was 
far stronger than the proportion of his numbers seemed to pro- 
mise ; and though it is said that he landed in Italy with no more 
than 40,000 men," while more than 200,000 were in arms against 
him, he might yet fairly calculate on meeting his enemies with at 
least an equal chance of victory. 

51 Livy, Epitom. LXXXIV. s^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 24. Appian, 

52 Cicero, de Oratore, II. 49. 79. 

53 Plutarch, in Sylia, 27. 



122 SYLLA LANDS IN ITALY, AND IS JOINED By POMPEY. 

The expedition set sail from Patrse in Achaea," and arrived in 
safety at Brundusium. The inhabitants of that town received 
Sylla without opposition, and he immediately began to move 
forwards. On his march through Calabria and 
syua lands in Italy, ^p^j j^^se ^js army obscrvcd the strictest discipline ; 
and his conduct tiius confirmed his professions, that he was ever 
ready to hsten to fair conditions of peace. It is said, that he sent 
deputies to the camp of Norbanus, to propose a negotiation ;" and 
that it was not till they had been insulted and outraged, that he 
commenced his military operations. He fell upon Norbanus, who 
was encamped in the neighbourhood of Capua, and defeated him 
with considerable loss. Over the other consul, L. Scipio, he ob- 
tained a still more decisive advantage. With him too he offered 
to treat, and commissioners from the two armies actually met to 
deliberate on the terms to be agreed upon.^^ Of the particulars 
which followed, contradictory accounts are given by different 
writers, none of whom are of sufficient authority to be confidently 
followed. The result, however, admits of no dispute ; the soldiers 
of the consular army were corrupted by those of Sylla,^' and at 
last, leaving L. Scipio and his son alone in the general's tent, they 
went over in a body to the enemy. Sylla then attempted to open 
a communication with the army of Norbanus ; but finding that 
his design was suspected, and that no answer was returned to his 
proposals, he continued to advance towards Rome, and then for 
the first time began to lay waste the country through which he 
passed. He was not, however, yet in a condition to approach the 
capital, where Carbo's influence prevailed so far as to procure a 
decree of the people,«" declaring all those who had joined Sylla, 
to be public enemies. This denunciation was not issued on light 
grounds ; for the nobility were flocking on all sides to the camp 
of the invader ; and Q,. Metellus had joined him with such troops 
as still adhered to him, and was zealously co-operating with him 
in the conduct of the war. 

It was at this time that Cn, Pompeius, the son of the late pro- 
consul of that name, first made his appearance as 
IS joined by pompey. ^ ^^^^^.^ character. After the death of his father, 
and the establishment of Cinna's power at Rome, he had retired 
into Picenum,^' where he possessed some property, and where 
his father's memory, hated as it was by the Romans, was regarded 
with respect and affection. To account for this, we must sup- 
pose, that during the long period of his military command in that 
neighbourhood, he had prevented his soldiers from being burden- 

55 Appian, 79. 59 Plutarch, in Sylla, 28. Appian, 85. 

56 Paterculus, 25. Livy, Epitom. LXXXV, 

57 Livy, Epitom. LXXXV. so Appian, 86. 

58 Cicero, Philippic. 12. II. ^' Plutarch, in Pompeio, 6. Paterculus, 

29. Appian, 80. 



CONSULSHIP OF CARBO AND THE YOUNGER MARIUS. 123 

some to the people, and had found means of obliging or gratifying 
some of the principal inhabitants. Be this as it may, his son pos- 
sessed so much influence in Picenum, partly hereditary, and partly 
personal, that he prevailed on the people to drive away the officers 
sent among them by Carbo, to enlist soldiers for I he support of 
his cause, and succeeded himself in raising an army of three 
legions, or about 16,000 or 17,000 men. With this force, having 
obtained also the necessary supplies for its maintenance from the 
zeal of the Picentes, he set out to join Sylla. He was at this time 
only twenty-three years of age, and had never filled any office in 
the state ; but his appearance at the head of an army so collected, 
announced him as a young man of more than ordinary promise ; 
and Sylla, as we are told, received him with the most flattering 
marks of distinction. 

Whilst both parties were endeavouring to strengthen their 
forces, the season for action gradually passed away, and the ar- 
mies mutually went into winter quarters. So imperfect are our 
accounts of this famous war, that we cannot tell how far Sylla 
had penetrated, nor what positions were occupied by him during 
the winter. His progress, however, had been such as to fill his 
antagonists with alarm : Carbo, therefore, caused himself to be 
appointed consul for the following year,^^ and se- consuihipofcarbo 
lected, as his colleague, C. Marius the younger, the Manus!"" ^°""^^' 
nephew and adopted son of the famous Marius, and who already, 
at the early age of twenty, seemed to have inherited all his father's 
wickedness. 

The winter was long and severe, and detained the armies on 
both sides for a considerable time in a state of inaction. Carbo, 
meanwhile, chose Cisalpine Gaul as his province,^ ^ and thus re- 
served the country to the north of Rome for the scene of his oper- 
ations ; while Marius lay between the capital and the main army 
of Sylla, on the confines, perhaps, of Latium and Campania. It 
was about this time that Sylla, to quiet the suspicions of the Ital- 
ian allies," who were afraid that he would rescind the conces- 
sions made to them during the ascendency of Cinna, issued a 
declaration that he would respect all the privileges which they 
actually enjoyed ; and on these terms concluded, as we are told, 
a treaty with them. But whether the Samnites were not among 
those to whom this promise extended, or whether they distrusted 
his sincerity, and thought they might do better by adhering to 
their old cause, it is plain that they were amongst his most deter- 
mined enemies, and, as we shall see presently, did more than any 
of their confederates to render his victory doubtful. On the part 
of Sylla, Q,. Metellus was opposed to Carbo on the side of Tus- 

«2 Livy, Epitom. LXXXVI. Appian, 63 Cicero, in Verrem, I. 13. 
87. 64 Livy, Epitom. LXXXVI. 



124 MASSACRE COMMITTED AT ROME 

cany/^ and after having gained an advantage over one of his 
lieutenants, was so hard pressed by the consul himself, that Cn. 
Pompeius, or, as his celebrity has caused his name to be angli- 
cized, Pompey, was sent to support him ; and these two com- 
manders together kept the fortune of the war in suspense. To 
the south of Rome, Sylla first took the town of Setia ; «s and 
Marius, retreating before him in the direction of Pra^neste, halted at 
a place called Sacriportum, situated apparently between Prseneste 
and Setia, and there drew out his army in order of battle. Sylla 
instantly proceeded to attack him, encouraged, as it is said, by a 
dream," which had visited him in the preceding night, and which 
had named the ensuing day as fatal to the family of Marius. The 
enemy had broken up the roads, and raised such obstacles to his 
march, that his soldiers, in their exertions to remove them, were 
worn doYf n with fatigue, and many of them threw themselves on 
the ground, with their heads resting on their shields, to seek relief 
in sleep. It was in vain to persist in forcing them to action under 
these circumstances ; and Sylla, however reluctant to contradict 
Battle. of saciiportum, hls drcam, issucd the order to halt, and to begin 
youn^r'isSatedby tho usual works for the formation of a camp. But 
uf ^672. A. c. 82. whllst lils Uieii were busied in digging the trench, 
the enemy's cavalry rode up, and began to annoy them ; till, irri- 
tated into an entire forgetfulness of their fatigues, they at once 
left their work, and rushed on sword in hand to revenge tlje 
insults that had been offered to them. Their vehemence, how- 
ever, might have proved fatal to themselves, had the soldiers of 
Marius done their duty ; but on the first impression made by the 
assailants on the adverse line, five cohorts of infantry and two 
troops of cavalry deserted their standards,^^ and joined the hostile 
army ; and this act of treachery presently decided the fate of the 
battle. The whole Marian army fled, and was pursued with 
great slaughter : the fugitives sought a shelter in Preeneste ; but 
the victors followed them so closely, that it became necessary to 
shut the gates in haste, and to exclude the greatest number of 
them, and even Marius himself was drawn up by ropes thrown 
down to him from the top of the wall.^' Thus exposed to the 
swords of their conquerors, 20,000 of them were said by Sylla to 
have been slain, and 8,000 made prisoners ; "" while he acknow- 
ledged on his own side no greater loss than that of twenty-three 
men. 

It was only a short time before the battle of Sacriportum, that 
Massacre committed tlic hcads of the popular party added their last and 
fhe^o'JngwMwius."^ most horriblc act to the numerous provocations 
which were soon to be so mercilessly repaid. At the commence- 

"j Appian, 87. Plutarch, in Pompeio.S. ^^ Appian, 87. 

66 Appian, 87. 69 Appian, 87. 

67 Plutarch, in SyllS, 28. ''° As quoted by Plutarch, in Sylla, 28. 



BY ORDER OF THE YOUNGER MARIUS. |^25 

ment of the campaign, Marius had fixed on Praeneste as the place 
of support to his operations/' and as the intended refuge and 
bulwark of his partisans, in case they should be defeated in the 
field. The situation of the town was naturally strong, as it was 
built on the side of a projecting eminence,''^ connected only by 
one narrow ridge with that chain of hills which rises immediately 
from the Campagna, or great plain of Rome, at the distance of 
about twenty miles from the capital. Standing on the edge of 
this plain, Prasneste is a conspicuous object from the walls of the 
eternal city ; and a strong army occupying this position, might 
greatly impede or endanger the approach of an enemy towards 
the capital from the side of Campania. Marius, therefore, had 
strengthened the place to the utmost, by the assistance of art, and 
had carried thither the treasure of all the temples in Rome,''^ to 
be converted into money for the payment of his soldiers. But the 
advance of Sylla still gave him considerable alarm ; and fearing 
that the aristocratical party in the capital might yet be able to 
exert itself with effect, should Sylla continue his progress, he sent 
instructions to L. Damasippus,''^ at that time prsetor, to assemble 
the senate in the Curia Hostilia. When the members were met 
together, the avenues leading to the spot where secured by armed 
men, and the individuals most obnoxious to the popular leaders 
were then marked out to be massacred. Publius Antistius, the 
father-in-law of Pompey,''^ and C. Papirius Carbo, a relation of 
the consul, and the son of that Carbo who had shared in the pro- 
ceedings of the Gracchi,''^ were murdered in the senate house. 
L. Domitius was killed in endeavouring to escape ; of him little 
else is known, but that his name and noble family were likely to 
render him an object of suspicion to the enemies of the aristocracy. 
But the most distinguished victim was Q,. Mucins ScsBVola, the 
Pontifex Maximus, who had earned the purest and the rarest glory 
of any of his contemporaries, by his virtuous administration of his 
province of Asia. Having brought home with him a character of 
spotless integrity and benevolence, he stained it by no subsequent 
acts of infamy ; his name is charged with no participation in the 
crimes of either party ; but he continued to reside at Rome, and to 
make himself generally useful to all who asked his advice, by his 
unrivalled knowledge of the civil law. Though bound by birth, 
and station, and connexions, to the cause of the aristocracy, and 
although the attempt made on his life by Fimbria, at the funeral 
of the elder Marius, might have warned him of the danger to 
which his virtues exposed him under the sway of the most profli- 

'''1 Paterculus, 26. "^^ Plutarch, in Pompeio, 9. 

72 Strabo, V. 261. 76 Cicero, ad Familiar. IX. epist. 21. 

73 Pliny, Histor. Natural. XXXIII. 1. De Claris Orator. 60. 
7* Livy, Epitome, LXXXVI. Paterculus, 

26. 



126 SYLLA RECOVERS ROME. 

gate of mankind, he yet had refused to quit Rome, or to choose 
any part in the civil war, declaring that he would rather die than 
take up arms against his countrymen. Marius, however, was 
bent upon his destruction ; and the soldiers of Damasippus ad- 
vancing to murder him, he tied to the temple of Yesta," ai]d was 
overtaken and butchered even within the sacred ground. His 
body, together with those of Domitius, Carbo, and Antistius, was 
thrown into the Tiber ; and by this murder of the most virtuous 
of citizens, it was hoped that the ascendency of the Marii, the 
Carbones, and the Norbani, might yet be maintained. 

But the issue of the battle of Sacriportum rendered this mas- 
syiia recovers Rome, sacro as fruitlcss as it was dctestablc. Marius, the 
NOTbMurto flyftom autlior of it, was now blocked up in Prasneste ; and 
I'^y- the road to the capital being left open, Sylla ad- 

vanced towards it with one part of his army, while the other part, 
under the command of Lucretius Ofella,"^ was pressing the siege 
of Prseneste. Rome receiA'-ed her new master without a struggle ; 
and he who had so lately been regarded as an outlawed rebel, 
being now in possession of the seat of government, was in a con- 
dition to retort the charge of rebellion on his antagonists. He 
immediately ordered their property to be confiscated ; and having 
then left the city to the care of some of his partisans, he again 
took the field, and hastened to Clusium, in order to supeiintend 
the operations of the war in Tuscany and the north of Italy.''' 
His arms were attended with equal success in every quarter : his 
lieutenants, Metellus Pius, Pompey, M. Crassus, M. Luculus, and 
others, signalized themselves by several victories over Carbo and 
his adherents ; and in proportion as the Marian party seemed 
declining, it suffered more and more from the treachery of its own 
members. Not only did the common soldiers often desert in large 
bodies to the enemy, but Albinovanus,^" an officer of considerable 
rank, purchased his pardon from Sylla by contriving the assassina- 
tion of several of his colleagues in command ; and Verres, on 
whom the eloquence of Cicero has bestowed such an infamous 
celebrity, and who was at this time quaestor of Carbo's army, 
abandoned his general,^' and carried off with him a consiJeiable 
portion of the money committed to his charge for the maintenance 
of the consul's forces. Attempts had been made in vain to raise 
the blockade of Proeneste ; and in this state of their affairs Nor- 
banus, being left almost alone at Ariminum by the desertion of his 
troops,^'^ escaped by sea to Rhodes ; while Carbo gave up the 
command of the army which he still possessed in Tuscany, and 
withdrew with some of his friends into Africa, hoping there to be 

77 Cicero, de Natura Deorum, III. 32. ^^ Cicero, in Verrem, I. 13, et seq. 

78 Appian, 88. 82 Appian, 91, 92. Livy, Epitome, 

79 Appian, 89. LXXXVIII. 

80 Appian, 91. 



THE SAMNITES ATTACK ROME. 127 

able to renew the contest, and to obtain the assistance of Hiarbas, 
the king of Mauritania. 

At this late period of the war, when the victory of the aristo- 
cratical party seemed decided, one desperate effort ^he samnites, with 
was made to wrest it from them, which had well MariMTiny .ftteck 
nigh altered the history of the world. The Sam- ^'""'^■ 
nites and Lucanians, alone of all the people of Italy, had not for- 
gotten their own national grounds of hostility towards the Roman 
government ; and whilst they supported the party of Marius 
against Sylla, they intended to make their assistance subservient 
to their own views, rather than to sink into the mere adherents of 
one of the factions of Rome. During the advance of Sylla, their 
armies rested securely amid their own mountains, and had seen 
the defeat of Marius at Sacriportum, and the blockade of the rem- 
nant of his forces in Prseneste, without exerting their main strength 
in his behalf Possibly they beheld without regret every field of 
battle covered with Roman dead, and may have rejoiced in the 
hope that, when both parties were exhausted by mutual slaughter 
they might themselves arise to wrest from their weakened hands 
the prize for which they were contending. But now, when the 
rapid victories of Sylla threatened them with a speedy termination 
of the civil war, their generals, Pontius Telesinus and M. Lam- 
ponius, saw that it was necessary for them to take a decisive part ; 
and before Carbo and Norbanus had left Italy, the Samnites and 
Lucanians had endeavoured to relieve Prseneste,^ ^ but were unable 
to force the strong positions occupied by the blockading army. 
Still they lingered in the neighbourhood, hoping that some opportu- 
nity might arise to facilitate the execution of their object. Mean- 
time Carbo had retired to Africa, and the army which he had 
forsaken had sustained a bloody defeat at Clusium from Pompey, 
so that the remaining generals of the popular party. Carinas,' 
Marcius, and L. Damasippus, the agent in the late massacre at 
Rome, resolved, as their last hope, to effect a junction with the 
Samnites and Lucanians, and then to attempt once more to deliver 
Marius and his garrison. The armies were united, and the at- 
tempt was made, but still in vain, when the confederate generals 
conceived the plan of falling suddenly upon Rome, which they 
thought to find stripped of troops, and utterly unprovided with 
means to withstand their assault. At this very time they were 
threatened at once by two armies, that of Sylla on one side, and 
that of Pompey on the other ; yet hoping to win the capital before 
their purpose could be discovered, they broke up from their camp 
in the night, hastened towards Rome, and halted till morning^* at 
the distance of little more than a mile from the Colline gate. Day 
dawned, and discovered to the Romans the unlooked-for sight of 

83 Appian, 90. 92. 8* Plutarch, in Sylla, 29. 



128 VICTORY OF SYLLA, AT THE PORTA COLLINA. 

the Samnite and Liicaiiian army. Some parties of cavalry, con- 
Eattieatthe coUine sistiiig of tliB flower of the youth of the city, imme- 
^^- diateiy sallied to observe and to check the eneni)'- ; 

but they were routed and driven back within their walls with 
severe loss. The panic then rose to the greatest height, when L. 
Balbus arrived with an advanced guard of seven hundred cavalry 
from Sylla's army, and hardly allowing his horses a moment's 
respite, he led them at once into action. Sylla himself followed 
soon after ; he was welJ aware of the urgency of the danger, and 
had hurried with the utmost speed in pursuit of the Samnites, as 
soon as he learnt their object. His men were greatly fatigued, 
and his officers pressed him to postpone the action, for it was now 
late in the afternoon of a November day ; but he refused to listen 
to them, and having ordered his men to eat their dinners as fast 
as they arrived from their march, he sent them to engage the 
enemy successively. Telesinus, on his part, forgetting his char- 
acter as a partisan of Marius, and feeling only as a Samnite gen- 
eral, rode along the ranks repeatedly exclaiming,^^ that this was 
the last day of the Roman empire, and calling to his soldiers to 
pull down, to destroy the city, for that those wolves, who had so 
long ravaged Italy, could only be extirpated by rooting up the wood 
which used to shelter them. At length M. Crassus, vAio com- 
manded the right wing of Sylla's army, routed the left of the 
enemy,^^ and pursued them as far as Antemnas ; but the wing 
which was led by Sylla in person, in spite of all the efforts of its 
general, was driven back under the walls of Rome, and was pur- 
sued even to the gates of the city. The gates were hastily closed 
to prevent the Samnites from entering together with the fugitives ; 
and the Romans, thus obliged to defend themselves, continued the 
Victory ofsyiia, at the actiou till some time after it was dark, although 
u°a 672. '°A. c°8!2. ■ wlth little liopc of reslstlug effectually. Nay, so 
great was the general panic, that some of Sylla's soldiers flying 
from the field arrived at the lines before Prseneste, and urged 
Lucretius Ofella, who commanded the blockading army, to raise 
the siege, and hasten to the rescue of his general and his coun- 
try. Night at last stopped the engagement, and the Romans be- 
lieved themselves completely defeated ; when, about an hour after 
the close of the action, an officer arrived from M. Crassus, with 
the tidings of his success, and requiring supplies of provisions to 
be sent to him at Antemnae. It then appeared that the enemy's 
loss had been even greater than that of Sylla ; and the morning 
displayed more fully the real issue of the contest. Telesinus had 
fallen, and his soldiers, discouraged by his death and by the ter- 
rible slaughter of the battle, had abandoned the field, and had 
begun to retreat in all directions. Sylla then, to lose no time in 

85 Velleius Paterculus, 27. 86 Plutarch, in Sylla, 29, 30. 



SYLLA COMMENCES HIS MASSACRES. jgg 

improving his victory, set out at an early hour, and immediately 
joined Crassus at Antemnae. 

The Roman writers, whose accomits of these times remain to 
us, after following Sylla thus far in his career, and gyu, eommences ws 
sympathizing in his victories over the popular party, massacres. 
all concur in turning away with unmingled abhorrence from his 
conduct after the decision of the struggle. One act of cruelty, 
indeed, follows another so rapidly in this part of his life, that a 
complete picture of his character cannot be drawn without satiat- 
ing the reader with details of spoliation, and outrage, and massa- 
cre. On his arrival at Antemnse, three thousand of the enemy 
sent to implore his mercy," which he promised them, if they 
would deserve it by helping him to execute vengeance on their 
associates. Thus encouraged, they fell upon another party of 
fugitives from their own army, and began to cut them to pieces ; 
and then surrendered themselves to Sylla, to receive his promised 
pardon. But they, with all the other prisoners taken after the 
battle, amounting together to eight thousand men, were conveyed 
to Rome, and orders were issued by Sylla that they should all be 
put to the sword. The men, thus doomed to be slaughtered, 
were not the instruments of former massacres and proscriptions, 
wretches whose punishment, hovv^ever shocking, might yet have 
worn the appearance of an awful retribution ; but they were 
mostly Samnite soldiers,^^ who had fought fairly against the Ro- 
mans in the field, and who were now to be sacrificed to the same 
atrocious policy which, in former times, had murdered their heroic 
countryman, C. Pontius ; which had driven Hannibal, in old age 
and exile, to end his life by suicide ; which had exercised every ex- 
tremity of unmanly cruelty against the brave citizens of Numan- 
tia, and against the rival people of Carthage. In the mean time, 

87 Plutarch, in Sylla, 30. writer whom we have been able to consult ; 

88 Ferguson has ventured to describe and as it is a point of some importance, 
those who were thus murdered, as, " six the references, by which any reader, who 
or eight thousand of those who were sup- has means and inclination, may satisfy 
posed to have been the busiest instruments himself, are here subjoined. 

of the late usurpations and murders," who Livy, Epitome, LXXXVIII. Auctor de 
had been " taken prisoners in the war, or Viris Illustribus, in Sylla. Floras, III. 21 . 
surprised in the city." It is not easy to Valerius Masimus, IX. 2. Seneca, de Be- 
say where Ferguson found his authority neficiis, V. 16. 

for this statement, as he appeals to no an- All these writers agree in the fact, that 
cient writer to justify it ; but it is a most the men who were massacred were sol- 
blameable misrepresentation, to use the diers, and soldiers who had surrendered 
lightest term, as far as it labours to give a themselves to the conqueror. Seneca's 
colour of retributive justice to a massacre words are as follows : — " Legiones duas, 
dictated by mere policy and national ha- quod crudele est, post victoriam ; quod ne - 
tred. In particular the words, " or sur- fas, post fidem, in angulum congestas con- 
prised in the city," are inserted especially trucidavit." 

to palliate Sylla's conduct, incomplete op- In addition- to these testimonies, Strabo 
position to the truth. That the men who declares that the victims were mostly Sam- 
were murdered were soldiers, taken in bat- nites, V. 271, edit. Xyland; and Appian 
tie, is the concurrent account of every agrees with him, I. 93. 



]30 THE PROSCRIPTION LISTS 

while the massacre was perpetrating, Sylla, having returned to 
Rome, had assembled the senate in the temple of Bellona,^' and 
was beginning to address the members upon the state of the 
republic. The cries of his victims mingled with his first words, 
and the senators started with horror at the sound ; but he, with 
an unmoved countenance, desired them to listen to him, and not 
to concern themselves with what was passing elsewhere ; what 
they heard was the correction bestowed by his orders on a few 
disturbers of the public peace. On the following day, Marcius 
and Carinas, two of the Roman officers who had joined the Sam- 
nite army previously to their attack on Rome, we/e taken in their 
flight, and being brought before Sylla, were, by his orders put to 
death, and their heads, with the head of Telesinus, were sent to 
Lucretius Ofella before Prasneste,^" with directions that they 
should be carried around the walls of the town, to inform the be- 
sieged of the fate of their expected deliverers. 

One signal act of justice was performed by Sylla at this time, 
which was received with general satisfaction. L. Damasippus,'' 
the murderer of Mucins Scaevola, had been taken after the late 
battle, and was instantly put to death. So great indeed were the 
crimes with which the chiefs of the Marian party were loaded, 
that men became reconciled to executions from the pleasure with 
which they regarded the fate of these flagrant oflenders. But 
they soon were taught that the wickedness of the sufierer ought 
never to lessen our hatred of bloody and illegal acts of vengeance. 
Numerous victims were every day murdered ; some by Sylla's 
own order : but many more were sacrificed to the rapaciousness 
or personal enmities of his adherents,^^ whose excesses he took no 
pains to suppress. At last he was entreated to relieve the com- 
monwealth from its present state of suspense, by assuring of their 
pardon those whom he did not intend to destroy ; but one of his 
own retainers gave a different turn to this request,'^ by asking 
him only to name those whom he had marked out for punish- 
The proscription lists meut. Sylla auswcrcd, that he would do so, and 
are published by Sylla, immediately published liis first list of proscriptions, 
containing the names of eighty individuals who were to be put to 
death : to this, on the following day, he added two iumdicd and 
twenty names more ; and again, on the third day, the fatal list 
was increased by an equal number. "These," said Sylla to the 
people, " are all that I can at present remember ; if 1 recollect any 
others who must be punished, 1 will proscribe their names here- 
after." It soon appeared that he had good reason to stipulate thus 
for the further gratification of his vengeance. In proportion as he 
extended his massacres, reasons would arise for perpetually adding 

89 Seneca, de ClementiS. I. 12. ^ Plutarch, in SyllS.Sl. Sallust, Cat- 

»" Appian,f)3 Palerculus, 28. alina..51. 

«' Sallust, Calalina,51. 93 Plutarch, in Sylla, 31. 



ARE PUBLISHED BY SYLLA. 13^ 

new victims to the catalogue of the proscribed ; and the more he 
became deserving of a future retaUation upon himself and his 
party, the more anxious was he to rid himself of every person 
who might be Ukely to assist in effecting it. But it was tlie most 
dreadful part of this proscription, that by establishing the reign of 
wild and unbridled violence, and by trampling under foot not only 
the laws of the commonwealth, but even the most lax of all the 
restraints which men under a low system of morals still imposed 
on themselves, it emboldened every meaner criminal to participate 
in the license of which the present master of the republic set so 
large an example. The meanest office, in ordinary times, is ob- 
tained from a government by its retainers with less ease ihan 
Sylla's followers could gain from their leader the gift of innocent 
blood. It is mentioned that one Q. Aurelius,^"* an inoffensive 
individual, who had never mingled in political quarrels, stop- 
ped one day in the forum to read the list of the proscribed, and 
found his own name among the number. " Wretch that I am !" 
he exclaimed ; " my Alban villa is my death ;" and before he had 
gone far from the spot, he was followed, overtaken, and murdered. 
Nor were these scenes confined to the neighbourhood of Rome 
but extended over the whole of Italy. All who had rendered any 
assistance to the Marian party,^^ who had carried arms in their 
cause, or had supplied them with money ; nay, those who had 
held any communication even in the commonest civilities of life 
with the enemies of Sylla, were exposed to the vengeance of the 
conquerors. It is natural to suppose that subordinate officers, 
commanding in remote provinces, would exceed the wishes of 
their chief, and would gratify their cupidity or their cruelty with 
less scruple. We are told that M. Crassus,^^ who was employed 
in Bruttium, proscribed a wealthy individual without Sylla's 
orders, in order to get possession of his fortune ; and that Sylla 
being informed of the fact, would never afterwards commit to 
Crassus any post of importance. But if this be so, Crassus might 
fanly complain of his ill fortune, for he had done no more than 
was practised by almost every one in similar circumstances ; and 
these supernumerary crimes heightened still more the horrors of 
the original proscription. Murders, it is said, were sometimes 
perpetrated even in the presence of Sylla himself,^" when some of 
the victims, condemned by his proscription, endeavoured to save 
themselves by a direct appeal to his mercy, and were slain in his 
sight by their pursuers, wno never found any interruption to their 
work from any touch of compunction in his nature. His doors 
were beset with the executioners of his orders, who flocked 
thither with the heads of those whom they had murdered, to claim 

Si Plutarch, in Syll^, 31. 96 Plutarch, in Crasso, 6. 

95 Appian, 96. 97 Appian, 95. 



132 SURRENDER OF PR^NESTE. 

from him the promised reward ; and it is said, that this sight so 
awakened the indignation of M. Cato,^^ who being then a boy- 
was taken by his tutor to visit Sylla, that he could not forbear 
asking for a sword, with which he might himself despatch the 
tyrant. Yet, on one memorable occasion the remorseless nature 
of Sylla listened to the intercession of his friends, and spared a 
man, whom, if he could have looked into futurity, he would, above 
all others, have desired to destroy. C. Julius Cassar,^^ then quite 
a young man, had married the daughter of Cinna, and, during the 
ascendency of his father-in-law, had been designed to fill the office 
of Flamen of Jupiter. He was further connected with the popular 
party through the marriage of Julia, his father's sister, with the 
elder Marius ; yet, although thus doubly obnoxious to the victo- 
rious party, he refused to comply with the commands of Sylla to 
divorce his wife ; and being exposed in consequence to his re- 
sentment, he fled from Rome, and bafiled all attempts upon his life, 
partly by concealing himself, and partly by bribing the officer 
sent to kill him, till Sylla was prevailed upon, according to Sue- 
tonius, to spare him at the entreaty of some common friends. A 
story was afterwards common, that Sylla did not pardon him with- 
out great reluctance ; and that he told those who sued in his be- 
half, that in Csesar there were many Mariuses. Had he indeed 
thought so, his was not a temper to have yielded to any supplica- 
tions to save him ; nor would any considerations have induced 
him to exempt from destruction one from whom he had appre- 
hended so great a danger. 

Soon after the defeat of the Samnites before Rome, the garri- 
surrenderof Praneste SOU of PrBBueste Surrendered, Marius attempted to 
Mariis?and mTsalre Gscape ft'om the towu by a subterranean passage, 
ofthePrEenestines. commuuicating with the open country;'"" but his 
flight was intercepted, and he fell, either by the hands of the 
enemy's soldiers, or, according to the more common account, by 
the sword of his own slave, whom he requested to perform this 
last service. His head was brought to Rome, and presented to 
Sylla, who ordered it to be exposed in front of the rostra, in the 
forum ; and as if his triumph were now complete, he assumed to 
himself, from henceforward, the title of Felix, or the Fortunate. 
He might have justly claimed this title, says Paterculus, if his life 
had not been prolonged beyond the hour which thus crowned his 
victory. Immediately on the surrender of Prauieste, Lucretius 
Ofella put to death several senators whom he found in the town,"" 
and detained others in custody, to wait Sylla's decision on their 
fate. Sylla soon arrived, and having first ordered the execution 
of all whom Ofella had arrested, and selected from the whole 

98 Plutarch, in Catone, 3. i"" Paterculus, 28. Livy, Epitome, 

99 Suetonius, in C. J. Caesar, 1. LXXXVIII. 

'"1 Appian, 94. 



DEATHS OF CARBO AND NORBANUS. I33 

number of his prisoners some few whom he thought deserving of 
mercy, he divided all the rest into three parties, one consisting of 
Romans, another of Samnites, and a third of the citizens of Prge- 
neste. To the first he said, that though they deserved death he 
nevertheless gave them their lives ; but the other two divisions 
were indiscriminately massacred, to the number, as is said, of 
twelve thousand persons. The women and children were then 
dismissed, with what prospect of future provision we know not ; 
and the town was given up to plunder. In like manner the 
towns of Spoletum, Interamna, Fluentia, Sulmo, Norba, Arretium, 
and Ariminum were plundered, ""^ and deprived of their privi- 
leges, and their inhabitants were either sold for slaves or massa- 
cred. But the Samnites felt the heaviest weight of the conqueror's 
vengeance ; for not satisfied with the slaughter of so many thou- 
sands of them in cold blood, both at Rome and at Prgeneste, he 
seemed bent on the utter extirpation of the whole people ; and his 
subsequent proscriptions destroyed or compelled to emigrate so 
large a proportion of them, that in Strabo's time the ancient cities 
of Samnium had either been reduced entirely to ruins'"^, or were 
dwindled to the rank of mere villages. 

Italy had been filled with murders and devastations from one 
end to the other, while the author of them was as pej^t^s of carbo and 
yet uninvested with any legal authority. His par- Norbanus. 
tisans, however, were every where inflicting as summary ven- 
geance upon his enemies, as if he had been the lawful sovereign 
of Rome. C. Norbanus, who had fled to Rhodes,'"^ finding that 
he was proscribed, and fearing that he might be arrested by 
Sylla's order, even in this remote exile, killed himself Carbo, 
after having abandoned Italy, had fled first to Africa;'"^ but 
hearing that some attempts were making to rally his party in 
Sicily, he crossed over to that island, leaving the command in 
Africa to Cn. Domitius. But his hopes were blasted by the arrival 
of Pompey, who, having been dispatched to Sicily by an order of 
the senate, soon crushed the beginnings of resistance there, and 
obliged Carbo again to fly to the neighbouring island of Cossura. 
He was pursued, however, and taken, and brought as a prisoner 
to Lilybseum, where Pompey then was. It is said, that his treat- 
ment was that of a common criminal ; that he was brought be- 
fore the tribunal, where Pompey sat as judge, and, after under- 
going a short examination, was ordered away to immediate exe- 
cution. By his death, added to that of Marius, the republic was 
left without consuls; and the senate accordingly appointed L. 
Valerius Flaccus to be interrex,'"^ that he might hold the comitia 

192 Floras, III. 21. Appian,94. Cicero, ^o^ Appian, I. 95,96. Livy, Epitome, 
in Verrem,!. 14 ; pro Ceecina, 33. LXXXIX. Plutarch, in Pompeio, 10. 

i»3 Strabo, V. 272. los Appian, 98. 

i« Livy, Epitome, LXXXIX. 



134 SYLLA IS APPOINTED PERPETUAL DICTATOR. 

for the elections of the ensuing year. But the interrex, having 
received instructions from Sylla, instead of proceeding to the 
election of consuls, moved, that the office of dictator, which had 
been disused almost since the time of Q,. Fabius Maximus, should 
now be revived, and intrusted to the hands of Sylla ; proposing 
besides, that it should be given him for an unlimited period, till 
he should have restored the affairs of the commonwealth to a 
state of tranquillity and security. Nor was L. Flaccus content 
with investing Sylla with absolute power for the future ; but he 
proposed further, that all his acts up to the present time should be 
ratified;'"^ thus giving the sanction of law to all his proscriptions 
and confiscations. The senate and people, however, felt that re- 
sistance was hopeless, and agreeing to both the proposed laws, 
Sylla was named dictator, and L. Flaccus was by him appointed 
his master of the horse. Having thus secured all real power to 
Sylla is appointed per- hlmsclf, Sylla was Still wiUing that the year should 
petuai dictator. i^q inarkcd as usual by the names of two consuls; 

and, accordingly, M. Tullius Decula and Co. Cornelius Dolabella 
were selected to wear the titles of the consular office. 

In this manner the liberties of Rome were surrendered into 
the hands of a man, whose utter contempt of his 
u. c. 672. A. c. 82. fp^Q w-crcaturcs seemed to promise a dreaful exer- 
cise of that absolute power with which he was now in some sort 
legally invested. His dominion, however, did not extend over the 
whole space of the Roman empire. In Asia, the war with 
Mithridates, which had been imperfectly smothered by the treaty 
concluded just before Sylla's arrival in Italy, was now again 
breaking out ; and in Africa, the native force of Mauritania, al- 
ways destined to assist the unsuccessful party in the civil wars of 
Rome, was supporting Cn. Domitius, and the last remains of the 
Marian fugitives from Italy, and was preparing to resist the arms 
of Pompey, to whom the task of establishing Sylla's authority 
was intrusted. But the most formidable enemy of the new gov- 
ernment was to be found in Spain. Thither Q,. Sertorius had re- 
tired, after the first successes of Sylla over the consuls Scipioand 
Norbanus ; and there he had organized a force, insignificant in- 
deed at present, in its actual strength, butwhich became, by the 
extraordinary abilities of its general, an invincible obstacle for 
many years to the complete triumph of the aristocratical party. In 
Italy, however, the power of the dictator was undisputed ; there 
a series of battles, massacres, and proscriptions, had ahnost anni- 
hilated the popular cause ; and the Commonwealth lay subdued 
and exhausted, incapable of resisting any remedies which Sylla 
might think proper to administer, in order to correct the evils from 
which it had suffered, and to infuse into it a principle of future 
health and vigour. 

">'' Cicero, de Lege Agraria, III. 2. 



LAWS OP SYLLA. I35 

' It is a most certain truth, that the leader of a victorious fac- 
tion can never safely be intrusted with the task of 
reforming that which is fauUy in the constitution of ^^^^ ^^ *' 

his country ; and least of all, when lie has committed acts so vio- 
lent as those of Sylla, in humbling the party of his opponents. 
The eyes of the dictator were blind to all grievances, except those 
under which the interests of his own friends had suffered; while 
he attributed all the disorders of the commonwealth to the turbu- 
lence and inordinate authority of the popular assembly and the 
tribunes. The great object of his measures, accordingly, was to 
strengthen the senate and the aristocracy, and to weaken the 
democratical part of the constitution. For this purpose, he trans- 
ferred the judicial power, which had been so often the subject of 
dispute,'"^ from the hands of the equestrian order to the senate. 
He deprived the tribunes of the right of proposing laws,'"^ and 
made it illegal for any one, who had filled the office of tribune, to 
be afterwards elected to any other magistracy. He increased the 
number of the pontifices and augurs,''" and repealing the law of 
Domitius, which had left the appointment of them to the people, 
he restored to them their ancient right of filling up the vacancies 
in their own body. He selected the most distinguished individu- 
als of the equestrian order to recruit the numbers of the senate,'" 
which had been greatly thinned by the civil wars and proscrip- 
tions ; and he pretended to subject the persons, whom he thus 
named, to the approval or rejection of the assembly of the tribes. 
Added to these were a great variety of statutes, some amending 
and strengthening the code of criminal laws, others providing for 
the better administration of the provinces, and others, again, tend- 
ing to promote the general regularity and security of the govern- 
ment. In these points, where the interest of the republic did not 
interfere with any personal or party views of the legislator, his 
wisdom and experience suggested to him regulations which were 
really excellent. Of his criminal laws, one was directed against 
forgeries of wills, or any other instruments,"^ and against coining 
or adulterating money ; and its object Vv'^as partly, perhaps, to deter- 
mine more carefully the penalty for such offences, and also, in the 
case of forgeries, to render them public crimes, for which any indi- 
vidual might lawfully prosecute. Another law, or rather another 
clause of the same law, denounced punishment against murders,"^ 
whether committed by poison or by actual violence ; and a third 
clause rendered it criminal in any magistrate or senator to have 

108 Velleius Paterculus, II. 32. Agrar. cont. Rull. II. 7. Dion Cassius, 

109 Livy, Epitome, LXXXIX. Appian, XXXVII. 46. edit. Leunclav. 

de Bell. Civili, I. 100. Caesar, de Bell. i" Livy, Epitome, LXXXIX. Appian, 

Civili, I. 5. Cicero, de Legibus, III. 9. I. 100. 

Lepidi Oratio, Sallust. 112 Cicero, in Verrem, I. 42. 

"» Livy, Epitome, LXXXIX, Cicero, "3 Seneca, de Providentia, 3. Cicero. 



10 



pro Cluentio, 54. 



I'^Q LAWS OF SYLLA. 

conspired or concurred in procuring the condemnation of a citizen 
in a court of justice."^ When we find so many various provisions 
comprehended in one statute, and many of them relating to the 
■first and most natural subjects of criminal legislation, we might 
be apt to wonder how such enactments could be needed, when the 
commonwealth had subsisted nearly 700 years, and must have 
possessed sufficient laws on all such points for many generations 
before the time of Sylla. But it seems that in all half-civilized 
countries, and in governments which have often been disturbed by 
seditions and acts of violence, the time at which a law is consid- 
ered obsolete commences early, and it soon ceases to regulate the 
proceedings of the courts of justice, unless it be sanctioned and re- 
newed at certain intervals by the authority of a more recent stat- 
ute. In this manner, we know that Magna Charta was confirmed 
often after its first enactment, in several successive reigns ; and 
thus, after such violent convulsions as the republic had lately sus- 
tained, Sylla might deem it expedient to republish and confirm 
anew the existing laws, on all points which he considered of im- 
portance. With regard to the provinces, Sylla limited the ex- 
penses allowed by the provincial cities to their deputies,"^ whom 
they were in the habit of sending to Rome at the end of every 
year, to pronounce a compliment before the senate, on the conduct 
of their late governor. He ordered, also, that every officer should 
leave his province within thirty days after the arrival of his suc- 
cessor;"^ and for the better prevention of bribery, it was enacted, 
that if a magistrate, condemned for this crime, ^'^ should not have 
property sufficient to refund all that had been corruptly received, the 
deficiency might be recovered from any other person who had 
shared in his unjust gains, or to whom any portion of them had 
descended. The general security of the government was con- 
sulted in some provisions of the law of treason, which also derive 
their origin from Sylla. By these, all provincial governors were 
forbidden to lead an army out of their province,"^ to carry on any 
war by their own authority, or to enter any foreign country with- 
out the order of the senate and people, to endeavour to tamper 
with the soldiers of any other general, or to set at liberty any of 
the ej*mies of the republic. The last of these, indeed, was an 
offlence of which Sylla could not be accused ; but he who had 
crossed over from his province into Italy with his army, who had 
made war upon the existing government of his country, and who 
had seduced the soldiers of the consul Scipio to desert their leader, 
had good reason to fear lest his own example should in turn be 
employed to his own disadvantage, and wisely desired to prevent 

•n Cicero, pro Cluentio, 54. '^^ Cicero, pro Rabirio Postumo, 4. 

"s Cicero, ad Familiares, III. epist. X. "^ Cicero, in Pisonem, 21 ; pro Cluen- 

''* Cicero, ad FainiJiaree, III. epist. VI. tio, 35 ; in Verrem, I. 5. 



LAWS OF SYLLA. I37 

Others from imitating that conduct by which he himself had ac- 
quired the dictatorship. 

Such are the principal measures by which the new sovereign 
of Rome proposed to reform the defects of the existing order of 
things. ■ It now remains to notice the price which the people had 
to pay for the benefits of his government. The property of all 
those whom he had proscribed, was declared to be forfeited to the 
state, "^ and was ordered to be publicly sold before the calends of 
June. All persons, even near relations, were forbidden to support 
or to assist any who had been proscribed ; and the children of the 
proscribed were excluded during their lives from the enjoyment of 
any public office or magistracy. Nor was the forfeiture of proper- 
ty confined to those only whose names Sylla had actually inserted 
in the lists of proscription. A clause in his law, 'de proscriptis,' 
was intended to provide for any omissions into which he might 
have fallen,'-" by including amongst those who were to be stripped 
of their fortunes, aU who had at any time been killed in any of the 
ports, garrisons, or lines of the adversaries. Yet even this did not 
carry the evil to its full extent. Long after the proscription lists 
had been closed,'^' and the war had been generally ended, Sextus 
Roscius, a wealthy citizen of the town of Ameria, inUmbria, who 
had attached himself to the party of Sylla, was assassinated in 
the streets of Rome ; his property was sold, and was bought at a 
price far below its value, by L. Chrysogonus, Sylla's freedman. 
A deputation was sent by the magistrates of Ameria, to acquaint 
Sylla with the merits of the case, and to intercede for the son of 
the murdered Roscius, who was thus deprived of his inheritance. 
But Chrysogonus, by his entreaties and assurances that he would 
satisfy their wishes, prevailed with them not to lay the affair be- 
fore the dictator ; and he found also several persons among the 
nobility, whom he persuaded to join with him in the same request 
and the same promises. The promises, however, were never ful- 
filled ; and the fortunes of Roscius were divided between an in- 
dividual of his own name, who was suspected of having procured 
his nmrder, and Chrysogonus, who was bribed with a share of 
the plunder, to contrive and maintain the forfeiture. It is not like- 
ly that Sylla was ever aware of the particulars of this transaction ; 
but his indifference to the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, and 
his pride, which regarded mankind as unworthy of his notice, 
naturally emboldened his creatures to commit numberless crimes 
in his name ; and the fortunes acquired by his freedmen and low 
dependents, as they added the severest pang to the sorrow and in- 
dignation of the people, so they are alone sufficient to show how 



"9 Cicero, pro Roscio Amerino, 43 ; in '20 Cicero, pro Roscio Amerino, 43. 
Verrem, I. 47; in Pisonem, 2. Velleius ^^^ Cicero, pro Roscio Amerino, passim . 
Paterculus,!!. 28. 



138 VICTORIES OP POMPEY IN AFRICA. 

little of real patriotism, or love of justice, was mingled with the 
pretended reforms of Sylla. 

We are told by Appian, that Sylla also passed a law,"^- by 
which all candidates for the prsetorship were obliged previously 
to have gone through the office of quaestor; and no one could be 
elected consul, without having before been prsetor. To this it was 
added that a certain interval must pass, before a man who had filled 
one magistracy could be again elected to another ; and he could not 
hold the same office the second time, till after the expiration often 
years. But this law was dispensed with in favour of his own ad- 
herents ; as we find, that L. LucuUus was appointed sedile when 
absent from Rome, and immediately afterwards succeeded to the 
prsetorship.'^^ Possibly, Sylla found it necessary to grant this 
indulgence to his own principal supporters ; for, in one instance, 
he had at first seemed resolved, in a remarkable manner, to enforce 
the law without distinction. Lucretius Ofella, who had com- 
manded at the siege of Prseneste, offered himself as a candidate 
for the consulship, "^^ without having been either praetor or qusestor, 
Sylla commanded him to desist ; and on his still continuing his 
canvass, ordered him to be slain by a centurion in the middle of 
the forum. Sylla then summoned the people before him, and told 
them that Ofella had been put to death by his orders. Appian 
reports, that he addressed the assembly, on this occasion, in a style 
characteristic of his deep contempt for those whom he governed. 
" A labourer, when at plough," said he, " was annoyed by vermin ; 
and he twice stopped from his work, and picked them off" his jacket. 
But finding himself bitten again, to spare himself any farther 
trouble, he threw the jacket into the fire. Now, I advise those 
whom I have twice conquered, not to oblige me the third time to 
try the fire." It was natural, however, that his chief officers 
should remonstrate strongly against such a precedent as the death 
of Ofella ; and, perhaps, it was owing to his knowledge of their 
sentiments, that he afterwards especially exempted them from the 
restrictions of his general law. 

During the course of the year, Pompey had completely de- 
victoriesofpompcyin stroycd all oppositiou to Sylla's government in 
*^™"- Africa.'"^ Hiarbas, king of Mauritania, and Domi- 

tius, his confederate, were defeated and slain ,; and Pompey, on 
his return to Rome, enjoyed the honour of a triumph, although he 
was not of senatorian rank, nor had ever filled any magistracy. 

When the nominal consulship of M. TuUius Decula and Cn. 
Reduction of Noia, Dolabclla was expired, Sylla, while still retaining 
u" c. erl'Tc. 81. the dictatorship, caused himself and Q,. Metellus 
Pius to be nominated as consuls for the year following. It ap- 

»2* Appian, 100. >2^ Appian, lOl. 

'23 Cicero, Academic, prior, II. 1. ^^ Livy, Epitome, LXXXIX. 



VIOLATIONS OP PROPERTY. I39 

pears, that amidst the general submission of Italy, two towns re- 
mained unsubdued up to this time ; Nola, in Campania, and 
Volaterrae, in Tuscany. The first of these had never been com- 
pletely reduced since the Italian war : a Roman army had been 
employed against it at the period of Sylla's first consulship ; and 
again, when Cinna was driven from Rome by his colleague Oc- 
tavius, it was to the camp before Nola that he first applied for 
support, and in which his attack upon the government was first 
organized. Our knowledge, however, of the fate of this town, 
after so long a resistance, is limited to the simple fact mentioned 
by the epitomizer of Livy, that Sylla reduced Nola. Volaterrae 
had been occupied by the remains of one of the Tuscan armies 
defeated by Sylla in the late war ; '^^ and numbers of Romans, 
who had been proscribed, escaping thither, and uniting with them, 
a force was formed amounting to four cohorts, or about 2400 
men. The situation of this town resembled that of the hill forts 
of India, or of those remarkable fortified heights which are to be 
seen rising in the midst of the valley close to Luxemburg. It 
was built on an isolated point, rising abruptly on every side from 
a deep and narrow valley ; on the top was a flat surface of con- 
siderable extent, which the town itself occupied ; and the ascent 
was nearly two miles in length, and was every where rough and 
difficult. These natural advantages enabled the garrison to hold 
out for two years ; and their resistance led Sylla himself to take 
the field against them,'^'' and to preside in person at the siege. 
Even at last, they would only surrender on a capitulation, by 
which they were allowed to leave the town unmolested ; while 
the vengeance of the conqueror fell only upon the inhabitants, 
whom he deprived of their lately-acquired privilege of Roman citi- 
zenship. It is remarkable that this alone, of all his measures, 
was maintained to be illegal, '^^ as exceeding even the power of 
the Roman people to authorize. The right of citizenship, accord- 
ing to Cicero, could never be taken away from any one ; and it 
is doubtful how far Sylla's laws on this subject were observe d, 
even during his lifetime. Thus it is satisfactory to see, that the 
real and substantial rights acquired by the people of Italy, sur- 
vived the violence of the storm, by which themselves and their 
party at Rome had been almost overwhelmed ; and amidst such 
a succession of crimes and miseries, the cause of true liberty had 
yet gained an advantage which it continued permanently to 
enjoy. 

It is, however, seldom at this period of history, that any thing 
favourable to human happiness offers itself to our 

T^ii • •! r Tt -i- 1 • Violations of property. 

notice. It the privileges 01 Roman citizenship were 

secured to the Italians beyond the power of Sylla to take away, 

n^s Strabo, V. 246. 12s Cicero, pro CaecinS, 33,et seq. 

127 Cicero, pro Roscio Amerino, 7. 37. 



140 SYLLA RESIGNS THE DICTATORSHIP. 

it was not so with their properties, over which he exercised the 
most absolute dominion. Large tracts of land had been wrested 
from different cities,'^^ as well as from proscribed individuals; be- 
sides which, there were considerable portions which had never 
been enclosed or appropriated, and of which Sylla now claimed 
the right to dispose as he thought proper. On all these he pro- 
ceeded to settle the soldiers who had enabled him to attain to his 
present greatness, Their numbers are variously reported ; the 
epitomizer of Livy stating them at forty-seven legions ; while 
Appian, with far greater probability, limits them to twenty-three. 
To make room for 115,000 new proprietors, for such, at the lowest 
computation, would be the nmuber of soldiers whom Sylla re- 
warded with a settlement, we may well imagine how large a pro- 
portion of the inhabitants of Italy must have been reduced to % 
poverty, even when every allowance has been made for the pro- 
bable amount of waste and unclaimed land, which formed a part 
of the distribution. But as one individual case speaks a far clearer 
language than any general statement, let the reader consult the 
first Eclogue of Virgil, and he will there find a picture, drawn 
from reality, of the dreadful misery occasioned by these gifts of 
victorious leaders to their soldiers. 

Having thus interested so many and such formidable sup- 
porters in maintaining his various regulations, Sylla proceeded to 
secure to himself a party in the assembly of the people of Rome. 
He gave liberty to more than 10,000 slaves,' ■'° chiefly belonging 
to men of the opposite faction, who had been proscribed, or had 
fallen in battle, and he allowed them to be enrolled freely among 
the tribes. These new citizens, according to the usual practice 
of the Romans, adopted the name of him who had given them 
their freedom, and were all called Cornelii ; and they of course 
would be most anxious to resist any counter-revolution, which, by 
rescinding Sylla's act, would have restored them also to their for- 
mer slavery. 

The persons nominated to the title of consuls for the following 
year, were P. Servilius, and Appius Claudius. Sylla's govern- 
ment was now fully established ; and the ascendency of his party, 
and the validity of his measures, seemed no longer to depend on 
his continuing to hold the office of dictator. He himself had no 
fondness for the mere ostentation of power, so long as he possessed 
the reality ; and his favourite enjoyments, the gratification of his 
sensual and intellectual appetites, might be piu'sued more readily, 
if he relieved himself from the ordinary business of the adminis- 
syiia resigns the die- tratiou of the commou Wealth. Accordingly, having 
u.c^75.' A.C.79. assembled the people in the forum. '^' he made a 
formal resignation of the dictatorship, dismissed his lictors, and 

Appian, 100. Sallust, Oratio Lepidi, '^o Appian, 100. 
in bullam. '3i Appian, 103, 104. 



SYLLA RESIGNS THE DICTATORSHIP. 141 

professing that he was ready to answer any charges against his 
late conduct, continued to walk up and down for some time, ac- 
companied by his friends, and then withdrew quietly to his own 
house. This is that famous abdication which has been ever 
viewed as so remarkable a point in Sylla's character; and which 
has been sometimes adduced to prove, that he was actuated 
chiefly by a regard to the public welfare in all that he had done 
to gain and to secure the sovereign power. 

But if the preceding pages have faithfully represented the 
state of parties at Rome, and have truly related the origin and 
events of the civil war, we shall form a different estimate both of 
the act itself, and of the motives which led to it. Sylla was the 
leader of the aristocratical interest, and it was his object to raise 
that interest from the low condition to which Marius and Cinna 
had reduced it, and to invest it with a complete ascendency in 
the commonwealth. This he had entirely effected. He had ex- 
tirpated the chiefs of the popular party ; he had plundered, and 
almost destroyed several states of Italy, who were used to support 
the popular cause at Rome ; he had crippled the tribunitian 
power ; had given to the nobility the exclusive possession of the 
judicial authority ; had enriched the most eminent families by the 
sale of the confiscated estates, which his principal partisans had 
purchased at a low price ; and he had provided for the security of 
his triumph, by immense grants of lands to the soldiers, by whose 
swords he had won it. He had raised to wealth and honours a 
great number of his own personal dependents ; '^'^ and he was 
himself in possession of a property amply sufficient to maintain 
him in a style of magnificence, and to give him the free enjoy- 
ment of his favourite pleasures. His pride had been gratified by 
the fullest revenge upon his own private enemies, and by the ab- 
solute control which he had exercised in the settlement of the 
republic, securing the interests of his party as he thought proper, 
without allowing them to direct or interfere with his measures. 
If his object, indeed, had been to convert the government into a 
monarchy, the resignation of the dictatorship might justly have 
surprised us ; but viewing him as the chief of a party, whose 
ascendency he endeavoured to establish, whilst he himself enjoyed 
a pre-eminent share of the glory, and power, and advantages of 
their success, his abdication appears to have been a sacrifice of — 
nothing. It is clear that he was still considered as the head of 
his party, and that he resigned no more than a mere title, with 
the fatigue of the ordinary business of the state, while he con- 
tinued to act as sovereign whenever he thought proper to exert 
his power. This appears from a speech, which Sallust ascribes 
to M. ^Emilius Lepidus, who was consul the year after Sylla's 

132 Sallust, Catilina, 51, Oratio Lepidi,in SuUara. 



142 I^IS MANNER OP LIFE AFTER HIS RESIGNATION. 

abdication. It is supposed to be spoken during his consulship ; 
and in it he continually inveighs against Sylla, as tlie actual ty- 
rant of the republic, without the least allusion to any resignation 
which he had made of his authority. And another speech, pre- 
served among the Fragments of Sallust, and ascribed to Macer 
Licinius, tribune of the people, a few years afterwards, speaks of 
Sylla's tyranny as only ending with his life. " When Sylla was 
dead, who had laid this bondage upon us, you thought," says 
Macer to the people, '• that the evil was at an end. But a worse 
tyrant arose in Catulus." It appears, then, that Sylla, while re- 
lieving himself from the labours of government, retained at least 
a large portion of his former power, and that, having completed 
his work, he devolved the care of maintaining it upon the other 
members of his party, while he himself retired to enjoy the pur- 
suits to which he was most strongly addicted. 

Then it was, when the glare of the conqueror and the legis- 
Hi8 manner of life ^^^^^' ^^^^^ ^^o lougcr throwu arouud him, that he 
after his resignation, gauk into the mcro sclfish voluptuary, pampering 
his senses and his mind with the excitements of licentiousness 
and of elegant literature. His principal companions, according 
to Plutarch, were actors and performers of various kinds, some of 
whom, indeed, such as the famous Q,. Roscius, were of unblem- 
ished reputation ; but others were of the vilest class of those 
wretches who ministered to every appetite of their patrons, of 
those men of prostituted talents, who, above all others, are most 
deserving of contempt and abhorrence. The intervals which 
were not passed in such society, .Sylla employed in the composi- 
tion of his own " Memoirs," a work in which he took great in- 
terest, and in which he brought down his history to within a few 
days of his death. It was about a year after he resigned the dic- 
tatorship, that he was attacked by the disorder which proved fatal 
to him ; and which is said to have been one of the most loath- 
His sickness and ' somc that afflict humauity. We have, in truth, no 
ux. 676. A.C.T8. very authentic accounts of his sickness ; but it was 
the belief of the Romans in the time of Pliny, '^^ that he who had 
shed such torrents of blood, was visited by an awful retribution 
of suffering ; that vermin bred incessantly in his body, and that 
thus he was in time destroyed. The senate ordered that his 
funeral should be celebrated in the Campus Martins;'^* and by 
his own desire his body was burnt, contrary to tlie general prac- 
tice of his family. '^5 who were accustomed to commit their dead 
to the ground. I3ut as he had ordered the grave of Marius to be 
opened, and his remains to be scattered abroad, he possibly de- 
parted from the custom of his ancestors, to prevent any similat 

133 Pliny, Histor. Natural. XI. 33 ; "4 Livy, Epitome XC. 
XXVI. 13 ; VII. 43. '35 Cicero, de Legibus, II. 22. 



HIS CHARACTER. 143 

insults from bsing hereafter offered to himself The memhers of 
his party, who owed their present greatness to him, testified their 
gratitude to their departed leader, by lavishing every kind of 
magnificence on his funeral. The soldiers who had served under 
him crowded to Puteoli,'^^ where he had died, and escorted the 
body in arms to Rome. All the ministers of the gods, all the 
magistrates of the commonwealth, in their ensigns of office, all 
the senate, the equestrian order, and an immense multitude of the 
people, walked in the procession ; and the ladies of the nobility 
vied with each other in offering perfnmes to throw upon the fune- 
ral pile.'" Such was the end of Sylla, in the sixtieth year of his 
age, 676 years after the building of Rome, and seventy-eight 
before the Christian era. 

His character must sufficie^itly be collected from the events of 
his life. Some anecdotes are to be found in Plutarch 

, . , , . . , . f, ., 1 • 1 ' And character. 

respectmg his behaviour m his lamily, which we 
cannot prevail on ourselves to copy on Plutarch's sole authority. 
It appears, however, that he was strongly attached to his wife 
Metella, although he is said finally to have divorced her, and to 
have married again only a few months before his death. The 
predominant feature in his character was an intense pride, and a 
contempt for mankind, feelings which must ever be incompatible 
with a virtuous and noble nature. Indifferent to the ordinary 
duties and honours of the republic, he found a stimulus during 
his early youth and manhood in literature and sensuality ; and to 
these he gladly returned in his last years, when he had fully 
satisfied the passions which led him to take part in political con- 
tests. But when circumstances drew him into public situations, 
his pride could be content with no second place ; and when he 
found himself slighted and injured, the desire of ample vengeance 
and of establishing his superiority beyond all rivalry, prevailed 
in his mind over every other. He found himself individually 
opposed to a man whom he envied for his military glory, and 
despised for his low birth and ignorance : as a patrician, he felt 
an aristocratical contempt for the popular party ; as a Roman he 
looked down with habitual arrogance upon all foreign nations. 
It happened that Marius, his enemy, was leagued with the popular 
cause at Rome, and with the Italian states, which were claiming 
an equality with Roman citizens ; and thus his pride as an indi- 
vidual, as a noble, and as a Roman, was wounded beyond endur- 
ance by their victory. But when that victory was accompanied 
by crimes which awakened the abhorrence even of the most 
moderate men, Sylla set no bounds to his retaliation, and seemed 
bent upon effecting the utter extirpation of all the three parties 
who were united against him, Marius and his personal enemies. 

>3S Appian, 105, 106. "7 piutarch, in Sylia, 38. 



144 HIS CHARACTER. 

the popular interest, and the ahied states of Italy. Careless of 
the means by which this end was to be accomplished, and utterly 
indifferent to the multiplied miseries with wiiich it must be at- 
tended, he commenced a series of boundless cruelties, in which it 
is impossible to find any resemblance to the just severities of a 
lawful government exercised upon flagrant criminals. He did 
not apply liimself to a calm review of the causes which had so 
long disturbed the peace of his country ; nor, as some tyrants 
have done, did he forget in his elevation the character of a party 
leader, and being placed above all, learn to regard all classes of 
citizens with an eye of impartiality. No doubt he reformed many 
things that needed alteration ; but they were the abuses of one 
side only that he removed, and all that he did was to provide for 
the security of his party, except in those points where the common 
sense of every government sees, that in the prevention of ordinary 
crimes its own interest and that of society are identified. The 
inscription which he is said to have dictated for his own monu- 
ment, well declares that constant thirst for superiority, or in other 
words, that unceasing pride, which we have called his character- 
istic quality. It contained, in substance, that no friend had ever 
outdone him in the exchange of good offices, and no enemy had 
done him more evil than he had rendered to him again in return. 
The character of Sylla, moreover, exemplifies a truth most 
useful to be remembered, yet most often contradicted or forgotten. 
His life, and the lives of many others in every age, and not least 
in our own, show that a cultivated understanding is no warrant 
for virtuous principles and conduct, and that the old adage of 

" Ingenuas didicisse fide'iter artes, 
Emollit mores, nee siiiit esse feros," 

unless a very strained interpretation be put upon the \YoxAfideliter, 
is widely at variance with the evidence of facts. Sylla had a 
general taste for literature ; he was intimately acquainted with 
the writers of Greece ; he delighted in the society of men of talent ; 
and he was himself long and carefully engaged in recording the 
history of his own actions ; yet no man was ever more stained 
with cruelty, nor was ever any more degraded by habitual and 
gross profligacy. Nor is this at all wonderful, if we consider that 
the intellectual faculties, like the sensual, are gratified by exercise ; 
and that the pleasure deriv^ed from the employment of talent is 
quite distinct from the application of the lessons taught by the un- 
derstanding to the government of the affections and the conduct. 
In all men, whose mental powers are at all considerable, the in- 
dulgence of them is as much an object of mere natural appetite, as 
the gratification of hunger and thirst is to the mass of mankind ; 
and it is only because it is less common that it is regarded as con- 
ferring on the character a much superior value. Bad men, of good 



SEDITION, REBELLION, AND DEATH OF LEPIDUS. 145 

natural faculties, gratify therefore with equal eagerness their 
animal and their, intellectual desires, and are equally ignorant of 
the government of either. It is the part of goodness to restrain 
both, and to convert them to their own purposes ; an effort which 
is as painful to pride in the one case as it is to the ordinary feel- 
ings of what is called licentiousness in the other : and it is the 
presence or absence of this effort which distinguishes talent from 
wisdom, and forms a perpetual barrier between men like Sylla, 
and those who have deserved the respect, and admiration, and 
love of posterity. 

It will form a proper conclusion to this part of our history, if 
we add here a short account of the disturbances sedition, rebellion, 
that immediately followed the death of Sylla, and pidus. 
which originated in an attempt made by the popular party to 
procure the repeal of his various laws and measures. The con- 
sulship was at this time filled by M. JCmilius Lepidus and Q,. 
Lutatius Catulus ; the former of whom had governed Sicily some 
years before as prsetor,'^^ and had rendered himself infamous for 
his maladministration ; the latter was the son of that Catulus who 
had been the colleague of Marius in his fourth consulship, when 
he overcame the Cimbri, and had afterwards killed himself when 
sentenced to die by the same Marius, at the beginning of Cinna's 
usurpation. During Sylla's lifetime, Lepidus had attempted to 
revive the popular cause, and had inveighed against the tyranny 
under which, as he said, the republic laboured. Upon the death 
of Sylla he endeavoured to deprive his remains of that magnifi- 
cent funeral with which the aristocratical party proposed to honour 
them ;'^^ but in this, as we have seen, he failed ; and Catulus, sup- 
ported by Pompey, succeeded in paying the last tribute to the late 
dictator's memory. Lepidus, however, having now declared him- 
self the enemy of the party in possession of the chief power in 
the state, at once proceeded to try his strength, and proposed that 
Sylla's acts should be rescinded,'^" which was, in other words, to 
move for a counter-revolution. Attempting to tread exactly in the 
steps of Cinna, he called on the Italians to support him,'^' as 
he was labouring to procure a restoration of the privileges of Ro- 
man citizenship for those states which Sylla had deprived of them. 
Disputes and contests, we know not of how serious a kind, were 
frequently occurring between his partisans and those of Catulus ; 
the senate, however, bound both consuls by an oath, that they 
would not carry their dissensions into a civil war. Lepidus, per- 
haps, consented the more readily to take this oath, as he expected, 
on the expiration of his consulship, to obtain the government of a 
province, and consequently the command of an army ; and he 

133 Cicero, in Verrem, III. 91. "i Appian, 107. Sallust, Oratio L. 

'39 Appipn, 105. Philippi contra Lepidum. 

"" Florus, III. 23. Livy, Epitome, XC. 



146 SEDITION, REBELLION, AND DEATH OF LEPIDUS. 

considered himself as only pledged to abstain from arms whilst 
he was actually consul. The senate, on their part, anxious to 
remove him from the capital, and either trusting to the obligation 
of his oath, or despising his means of injuring them by open re- 
bellion, allowed him, on the expiration of his office, to receive the 
command of the province of Gaul,'**^ with the title and authority 
of proconsul. No sooner did he find himself at the head of an 
army than he threw aside all reserve ; he endeavoured to raise 
partisans in Etruria, the quarter of Italy in which the latest re- 
sistance had been made to the power of Sylla ; whilst from his 
station in Gaul he might easily connect himself with those re- 
mains of the Marian party which Sertorius yet kept in the field in 
Spain. Numbers also of the lowest and most profligate inhabi- 
tants of Rome flocked to join him ; the same men who had aided 
the riots of Sulpicius, and had been ready agents in the massa- 
cres of Marius and Damasippus. Lepidus marched at once to- 
wards the capital, and approached almost as far as the very walls 
of the city ; but the senate were prepared for their defence. Ap- 
pius Claudius, the interrex, the consuls for the following year not 
being yet chosen, and Q,. Catulus, as proconsul, were charged to 
provide for the safety of the state : and, by the forces which they 
collected, Lepidus was easily checked and defeated. Destitute 
of any further means to continue the war in Italy, Lepidus 
then retired to Sardinia,'^' where he was soon attacked by sick- 
ness, and died in the midst of his plans for renew- 
ing the contest. M. Brutus,'^^ one of his officers, 
and the father of the famous assassin of Cassar, was about this 
time taken and put to death at Mutina, by Pompey ; and thus the 
ascendency of the aristocracy remained unimpaired, and was pro- 
bably rather strengthened than injured by this rash and idle 
attempt to overthrow it. But the present leaders of the victorious 
party were men who have left behind them a purer character than 
most of their countrymen ; and Catulus has the rare merit of sul- 
lying his triumph with no cruelties, '^^ and of remaining content 
with the suppression of the rebellion, without endeavouring to 
add any thing further to the powers and advantages of his friends, 
or to the depression of his antagonists. 

•42 Snllust and Appian, locis citatis. '" Livy and Plutarch, ubi supra. 

»3 Livy, Epitome, XC Plutarch, in '« Florus, III. 23. 
Pompeio, 16. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PART I. 

CAIUS JULIUS C^SAR— A VIEW OF THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS OP 
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.— FROM U.C. 676, A.C. 78, TO U.C. 695, A.C. 59. 

The nobility of the Julian family was so ancient and so illustri- 
ous, that even after it obtained the imperial dignity, y^omv c. eie, a. c. 
it needed not the exaggeration of flatterers to exalt 59'/" ^' ^- ^^^' ^- ^• 
it. Within thirty years after the commencement of The juiian family. 
the republic, we find the name of C. Julius on the list of consuls ; 
and the same person, or a relation of the same name, is said to 
have been one of the decemviri, by whom the laws of the Twelve 
Tables were compiled. During the Punic wars, and the whole 
of the sixth century of Rome, the family produced indeed no indi- 
viduals of distinguished character ; but there is a Sex. Julius Cae- 
sar among the praetors of the year 544, a L. Julius among those 
of the year 569, and a Sextus Julius, who appears as consul in 
596, seven years before the third Punic war. In the seventh cen- 
tury we have already had occasion to mention three of the Cae- 
sars ; namely, Sextus Julius Caesar, who was consul with L. Phi- 
lippus, A.u.c. 662, during the famous year of the tribuneship of 
Drusus ; L. Julius Caesar, who was consul in the year following, 
who distinguished himself in the Italian war by a great victory 
over the Samnites, and who was afterwards murdered by the order 
of Marius ; and C. Julius Caesar, the brother of Lucius, eminent 
as an orator, for his wit and pleasantry, whose irregular offer of 
himself for the consulship, in 665, first led P. Sulpicius to act the 
part of a popular tribune in opposing him, and who perished, to- 
gether with his brother, when Marius and Cinna first usurped the 
government. But the individual to whom the name of Caesar 
owes its renown with posterity, was cousin in the second degree 
to these two brothers, and nephew to Sex. Caesar, the colleague of 
L. Philippus in the consulship. His father was C. Julius Caesar, 
a man of praetorian rank, and who is recorded by Pliny as a re- 



148 



OF THE EARLY LIFE OF C^SAR. 



markable instance of sudden death,' he having expired suddenly 
one morning at Pisa, while dressing himself. C. Cassar married 
Aurelia,^ of the family of Aurelius Cotta ; and of these parents 
was born the famous Caius Julius Caesar, about the ^^ear of Rome 
653, in the consulship of O. Marius and L. Valerius Flaccus. 

Some of the incidents of his early life, his marriage with the 
On the early life of daughter of Cinua, and his narrow escape from the 
Caesar. proscriptiou of Sylla, have been already related. But 

although there are numerous anecdotes to be found of him in the 
stories of his two biographers, Suetonius and Plutarch, yet the au- 
thority of both these writers is so low, and their accounts are at 
such variance with one another, that it is useless to repeat that 
which we have such imperfect grounds for believing. Without 
pretending to arrange the order of the several events, it will be 
enough to say, that he commenced his military service at an early 
age in Asia, and was present at the reduction of Mitylene,^ the 
only town which remained in arms against Rome after the end of 
the first war with Mithridates. He studied eloquence for some 
time at Rhodes,^ under Apollonius Molo, from whom Cicero, about 
the same period, was also receiving instructions. On one occa- 
sion he was taken by some of those pirates, who were then so 
formidable on all the coasts of Greece ^ and Asia, and was detained 
by them till he collected from some of the neighbouring cities fifty 
talents for his ransom. No sooner was he released than he pro- 
cured a small naval force, and set out on his own sole autiiority 
in pursuit of the pirates. He overtook them, and took some of 
their vessels, which he brought back to the coast of Asia with a 
nuniber of prisoners. He then sent word of his success to the pro- 
consul of Asia, requesting him to order the execution of the cap- 
tives ; but that officer being more inclined to have them sold for 
slaves, Csesar crucified them all without loss of time, before the 
proconsul's pleasure was officially known. Such conduct was 
not likely to recommend him to those in authoiity ; and we are 
told, that on several other occasions he wished to act for himself,® 
and even to lake part in the war which was now renewed with 
Mithridates, without any commission from the government, and 
without submitting himself to any of the regular officers of the 
republic. These early instances of his lawless spirit are recorded 
with admiration by some of his historians, as affording proofs of 
vigour and greatness of mind. 

He first brought himself into notice at Rome by bringing a 

' Pliny, Histor. Natur. VII. 53. ^ Suetonius, 4. Cicero, de Claris Ora- 

2 Siieionius, in C. Jul Caesare, 74. toribus, 91. 

3 Suetonius, in C. Jul. Ca3sare, 2. Livy, ^ Veileius Paterculus, IL 41, Sueloni- 
Epilome,LXXXIX. us, 4. 

* Suetonius, 4. 



HIS FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AT ROME. 149 

charge of corruption in his province against Cn. His first public ap^ 
Doiabella/ who had been consul with M. Tullius IZTL^Lfo^^s 
Decula, under the dictatorship of Sylla, and had the popular party. 
since been appointed to the province of Macedonia, and had ob- 
tained a triumph for some victories over the neighbouring barba- 
rians, Dolabella, however, was defended by Cotta and Horten- 
sius, two of the most famous orators of that period, and was 
acquitted. Whatever may have been the merits of this case, 
Caesar probably was glad to seize any opportunity of annoying the 
partisans of Sylla; and even in his early youth he made no secret 
of his enmity to the aristocratical party, and obtained the credit 
of boldly supporting the weaker cause, by an ostentation of his 
regard for the memory of Marius and Cinna. He lost during his 
qusestorship both his own wife,^ Cornelia, the daughter of Ciima, 
and his aunt Julia, who had been the wife of the eider Marius. 
He pronounced an oration inhonour of each of them ; and, at the 
funeral of his aunt, he ordered that the images of her husband 
Marius should be exhibited amongst those of her other deceased 
relations and ancestors, which, according to the custom of the 
Romans, were always carried in the procession on such occasions, 
Marius having been adjudged a traitor, the sight of his statues 
produced a great surprise among the people, and the lower j»opu- 
lace, looking upon them as a pledge of the revival of the popular 
party, welcomed them as they passed with the loudest acclama- 
tions. Bnt, whilst Cassar was thus giving tokens of the danger 
which the aristocracy had to apprehend from his political career, 
he almost lulled their fears by the unbounded infamy of his per- 
sonal character. We will not and cannot repeat the picture which 
ancient writers,^ little scrupulous on such points, have drawn of 
his debaucheries ; it will be sufficient to say, that he was stained 
with numerous adulteries committed with women of the noblest 
families; that his profligacies in other points drew upon him 
general disgrace, even amidst the lax morality of his own con- 
temporaries, and are such that their very flagitiousness has in 
part saved them from the abhorrence of posterity, because modern 
writers cannot pollute their pages with the mention of them. 

With such an outline of the family and the early life of C. 
Caesar, we shall close his personal history for the present. Ac- 
'cording to the plan which we have pursued on former occasions, 
we shall attempt to describe the state of the Roman empire im- 
mediately before that period at which his ambition openly aspir- 
ed to enslave it ; and we trust to be forgivtm, if we sacrifice to 
this object some details of particular facts, which are either little 

' Suetonius, 4. Cicero, de Claris Ora- ' Suetonius, 49, et seq. et Auctores ibi 
toribus, 92. citati. 

* Suetonius, 6. Plutarch, in Csesare, 5. 



150 



OF SPAIN. 



worthy of attention, or, from their great notoriety, are already 
familiar to every reader. 

If a merchant of Alexandria had traversed the Mediterranean 
state of tho Roman in the year of Rome 680 ; if he had been bound in 
y^r68o,B.c"73. ^^ tho first Instanco to Spain ; if thence he had been 
led by circumstances to visit the coasts of Italy, and to pass a 
short time at Rome itself; if then, while pursuing his voyage 
homewards, he had met with the fate which at that period was 
most likely to befall him, that of falling into the hands of pirates ; 
and finally, if he had touched at some places on the coasts of 
Greece and Asia Minor, while his captors were returning with 
their prize to their strongholds in Cilicia ; and if, having effected 
his ransom, he had at last been happy enough to reach Egypt in 
safety, and had there recorded the story of his eventful voyage, 
and of the various scenes which he had witnessed ; with what 
delight should we have welcomed such a treasure, and how thank- 
ful should we feel to that African traveller whose researches 
should procure for us so valuable a fund of information. The 
thought, indeed, of the knowledge of antiquity which we desire, 
is enough to make us discontented with that which we possess. 
But in imagining the case of the Egyptian merchant, our object 
is to bring before our readers at one view the state of the different 
extremities of the Mediterranean ; and to enable them to judge of 
the condition of the times, by describing the scenes which would 
have presented themselves to the eyes of an individual, in whatever 
quarter of tlie Roman empire his fortune might have placed him. 

If a trading vessel had approached the more southern parts 

of Spain, she might have found every thing tran- 

ofspain. ^^^^ , 1^^^^ ^£ ^^^^ course had been directed towards 

the mouths of the Sucro or the Ebro, she would have probably 
been stopped by the light cruisers of Sertorius,'" which covered 
the whole coast in order to intercept any supplies coming by sea 
for the armies of Pompey and Metellus. On shore, the country 
was suffering under the miseries of a long and dubious warfare. 
We have already sliglitly mentioned the beginnings of Sertorius's 
career, and we shall have occasion to speak of him hereafter 
more at length. He had at first been opposed in Spain by Q,. 
Metellus Pius ; but, when that officer was found unable to bring the 
war to a conclusion, and Sertorius had been greatly reinforced by 
the troops which had followed Lepidus in his attempt to revive 
the popular cause, and which after his defeat M. Perpenna had 
led into Spain," the senate deemed it necessary to intrust the 
command to a general of the highest reputation, and accordingly 
fixed their choice upon Pompey. Sertorius, however, withstood 

w Plutarch.inSertorio, 21. Strabo, III. » Appian, dc Bell. Civil. I. 108. 
167, edit. Xyland. 



OP GAUL. 



151 



the united efforts of his two antagonists with great ability and 
success : he availed himself of the activity and ingenuity of the 
Spaniards, who were warmly attached to him, and who became 
most excellent soldiers, when they had received from him some 
portion of discipline and military skill in addition to their natural 
excellences. The war which had begun before the death of 
Sylla, was still in the year 680 maintained with unabated vigour ; 
nor was it terminated till two years afterwards, when, Sertorius 
having been assassinated by some of his officers, who were jeal- 
ous of his talents, but very unable to supply his place, Pompey 
obtained an easy victory, reduced the whole of Spain to a state of 
obedience, and returned to Rome to enjoy the honours of a tri- 
umph, and to enter upon the office of consul. In 
the mean time we find that his army, "^ for a con- ' '^^^' 

siderable portion of the time that it had served in Spain, was very 
irregularly paid, and was obliged to support itself at the expense 
of the country which was the seat of war. This was also the 
case with the army of Sertorius ; so that the whole northeast of 
Spain, as may readily be imagined, was reduced to a state of the 
greatest poverty and desolation. 

Pursuing a coasting navigation from Spain towards Italy, a 
vessel would naturally stop at some of the ports of 
the province of Gaul. It appears that the Gauls on 
both sides of the Alps had taken up arms in the cause of Lepidus ; 
and Pompey, when marching into Spain, had inflicted on them 
a severe chastisement,' ^ and had expelled many of the Transal- 
pine Gauls in particular from their cities and territories. During 
the war with Sertorius, the province of Gaul was obliged to con- 
tribute largely to the necessities of the Roman armies, and both 
Metellus and Pompey, on two several occasions, wintered there,'* 
Avhen the country to the south of the Pyrenees was too much ex- 
hausted to maintain them. Manius Fonteius was about this 
time governor of the province, and he made himself very odious 
to the natives, not only by the rigour with which he exacted sup- 
plies of horses, corn, and money, for the troops in Spain, but by 
the duties which he levied on their wines, '^ and, as they alleged, 
by the partial and corrupt manner in which he demanded their 
services in making roads. '^ Fonteius was afterwards brought to 
trial at Rome for his conduct in his province ; and while Cicero, 
in his defence of him, denies strongly the charge of corruption, he 
admits the severity, or, as he calls it, the vigour, with which he 
maintained the authority of Rome amongst a people always tur- 
bulent and disaffected, and who were so lately in open rebellion. 

12 Epistola Cn. Pompeii, apud Fragm. '* Epistola Cn. Pompeii, apud SaJIust. 
Sallust. Cicero, pro Fonteio, 3. 

'3 Cicero, pro Fonteino, 3 ; pro Lege '5 Cicero, pro Fonteio, 5. 
Manilla, 10. , i^ Cicero, pro Fonteio, 4. 

11 



152 STATE OF PARTIES IN ROME. 

From Gaul a short passage would transport the voyager to 
the mouth of the Tiber, and would place him amongst all the 
various rumours, and inteiests, and speculations which abound 
in the seat of government of a great empire. At 
^ "*'^' the period of which we are now speaking, he 

would have found the public attention seriously excited by an 
Insurrection of the insurrectiou of gladiators, which had "broken out a 
gadiators under Spar- gj^Qj.^ ^jjj^g bcfore. About scveuty persons of this 
class,'^ mostly natives of Gaul and Thrace, who had been either 
taken prisoners in war, or carried off by slave-traders from their 
own country, had effected their escape from the place where they 
were kept in training at Capua. Having fallen in with some 
wagons on the road, which were carrying a quantity of arms 
for the use of the gladiators in a neighbouring city, they seized 
the whole supply, and retired to Mount Vesuvius, as to a post 
which they might maintain with advantage. Here they chose 
three leaders, Spartacus, Crixus, and ^nomaus ; and having re- 
pulsed the first attempts which were made to reduce them, their 
numbers were rapidly swelled by the concourse of fugitive slaves 
from all quarters, and by many of the poorest class of freemen, 
who were allured by the prospect of plunder. They were attack- 
ed by a regular force commanded by a Roman pisetor ; and hav- 
ing completely defeated it, they quitted their asylum of Mount 
Vesuvius; and receiving daily large additions to their numbers, 
they plundered several of the principal cities in Campania, in- 
tending, when satiated with plunder, to march towards the Alps, 
.and thus to effect their escape in safety to their own countries, carry- 
ing with them the spoils of Italy. 

An intelligent and curious traveller would naturally have wish- 
state of parties in edto gain some insight into the stale of parties 
^°'"«=- in the capital, and itrto the views and feelings of 

the people with respect to public affairs. Five years had elapsed 
since the death of Sylla, and the laws which he had enacted 
were still almost wholly in force, and the depression cf the popu- 
lar interest was consequently almost the same as after his victory. 
Since the defeat of Lepidus, one or two tribunes had attempted to 
restore their office to its former powers and dignities ; but their ef- 
forts had been ineffectual, and one of them, Cn. Sicin- 
^■*^'^'^' ius, is said to have lost his life through the violence 

of his opponents.""' C. Cotta, however, who was consul in the year 
678, finding the people in a condition of great distress, owing to the 
disturbed state of many of the provinces which used to supply the 
capital with corn, and to the extensive depredations committed by 
the Cilician pirates, deemed it expedient to try some means of con- 

" Livy, Epitome, XCV. Plutarch, in '^ OratioC. Licinii Macri, opud Fragm. 
Crasso, 8. Appian,de Bell. Civili, 1. 116. Sallust. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE CILICIAN PIRATES. J 53 

ciliating them. Accordingly he procured the repeal of that law of 
Sylla,'^ by which those who had been tribunes of the people had 
been declared ineligible to any of the higher magistracies, and 
he was empowered by the senate to sell the tithes of wine and 
oil, which the Sicilians always paid in kind,"" not in Sicily, as 
had hitherto been the practice, but at Rome, in order soniewhat 
to lower the price of provisions in the Roman markets. A cer- 
tain distribution of corn was also made among the poorer citizens,^i 
by which each man received five pecks at a very low price. 
But these were only temporary experiments ; and we find C, 
Macer Licinius, one of the tribunes for the year 680, lamenting 
the humbled and dispirited state of the people, who, so soon as 
they left the forum, forgot all their political interests, and were 
desirous only of gaining, undistmbed, a subsistence for them- 
selve and their families. These are the circumstances which are, 
above all others, most unfavourable to the cause of true liberty; 
and they are the natural result of bloody civil dissensions, which 
generally leave behind them a disgust for political business, attend- 
ed with a large portion of individual distress. In order to rouse 
the people from their apathy, the popular leaders are then tempt- 
ed to employ stimulants of the most violent nature ; to exag- 
gerate the public grievances, and to misrepresent and traduce 
the party of their antagonists, thinking that nothing less than 
an excessive indignation can repair the evils of an excessive 
indifference. At Rome, however, during the period of which 
we are now speaking, the moderation and popular virtues of 
many of the principal individuals of the aristocracy obviated in 
a great measure the mischief of these invectives. The people 
were taught to feel their own power, and to exercise it ; but they~ 
respected the senate, and continued for some time to submit to its 
regulated influence and authority; till the efforts of some worth- 
less individuals again excited jealousies and dissensions : in the 
course of which, the senate and the people were opposed to one 
another in a quarrel which was not their own ; and a war, in 
which no national nor public iiiterests were propei'ly involved, 
enabled one profligate adventurer to overturn the wdiole constitu- 
tion, and to overwhelm all ranks of the commonwealth together 
under his own despotism. 

We have said that a merchant vessel, bound from Rome to 
the eastern part of the Mediterraneati in the year ongin and progress of 
680, would, in all probability, have fallen into the theVatesofciiida. 
power of some of the pirates by whom the sea was at this time 
infested. At no other period in the history of the world has pi- 
racy been carried to such a formidable height ; and even the ex- 
's Asconius, in Ciceron. pro Cornelio ^^ Oratio C. Macri, apud Fragm. Sal- 
Oration. 1. lust. 
20 Cicero, in Verrem, III. 7. 



154 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF 

ploits of the famous buccaneers in America are less wonderful, 
when we consider that the pirates of Asia did not confine their 
ravages to a distant quarter of the Roman empire, where the arm 
of the government would necessarily act with less vigour, but 
that they insulted and annoyed the neighbourhood of the capital 
itself. We possess only imperfect accounts of their origin ; but 
we learn that in the wars between Greece and Persia,^'^ the Cili- 
cians usually formed a considerable part of the king's navies, and 
that the nature of their country disposed them to maritime affairs. 
The chain of Mount Tauius,^^ in its course from the western 
coast of Asia Minor, approaches nearly to the Mediterranean, to- 
wards the southeastern extremity of the peninsula ; leaving be- 
tween itself and the sea a district of unequal breadth and dissimi- 
lar character, which was divided into two parts, the mountainous 
and the plain Cilicia. Of these, the mountainous CiUcia present- 
ed a number of strongholds, built on high and steep cliffs over- 
hanging the sea, and each, for the most part, commanding either 
a small harbour, or a smooth and sheltered beach, which, for the 
purposes of ancient navigation, was hardly less convenient. 
With these facilities of access to the sea, and of escape from its 
violence or from the pursuit of an enemy, were combined the 
advantages of an inexhaustible store of timber in the cedar forests 
of Taurus, and the stimulus afforded by the natural poverty of a 
mountain region, which inclined its inhabitants to a life of plun- 
der, A people of this description can only be civilized by the 
systematic efforts of a powerful government ; but the Cilicians 
had first been included in the empire of Persia, and after the 
conquests and early death of Alexander, they formed a part of the 
kingdom of Syria, But neither the kings of Persia nor of Syria 
were likely to employ themselves in civilizing their barbarian 
subjects ; and the character and habits of the Cilicians remained 
unchanged, till, in the seventh century of Rome, the increasing 
weakness and the constant family dissensions of their sovereigns 
enabled them to indulge their inclinations with less restraint. 
The chiefs of the several strongholds along the coast, despising 
the authority of the Syrian government,^* commenced a system 
of plunder ; and the circumstances of the times determined them 
to follow peculiarly the occupation of manstealers. The demand 
for slaves among the great land proprietors of Ital}^ so far exceed- 
ed the occasional supply produced by the conquests of the repub- 
lic, that the slave-trade was become a most lucrative branch of 
commerce ; and the Cilicians, being bold and able seamen, car- 
ried it on with success, by making descents on various parts of 

22 Herodotus, VII. 91 ; VIII. 63. Thu- 24 Strabo, XIV, 766, et seq., edit. Xy- 
cydides, I. 112. land. 

23 Strabo, XIV. 766, et seq., edit. Xy- 
land. 



THE PIRATES OF CILICIA. 



155 



the neighbouring coast, and surprising the persons of the inhabit- 
ants. They then carried their captives to Delos, which was so 
great a mart for this traffic, that many thousands of slaves might 
be landed there, sold, and exported again on the same day. 
Doubtless, the well-known horrors of the " middle passage" were 
experienced often by the unhappy wretches who were crowded 
together in narrow vessels, built far more for swiftness than for 
the reception of passengers, and who were exposed to the cruelty 
and merciless avarice of a crew of barbarian pirates ; whilst they 
themselves would frequently be persons of some fortune and ed- 
ucation, torn away, with their wives and children, from the en- 
joyment of all the comforts of civilized life. Nor did the neigh- 
bouring states of Cyprus and Egypt attempt to prevent these 
atrocities ; but they are said to have witnessed them with plea- 
sure through jealousy of the Syrians, who were the chief sutfer- 
ers. But both they who neglected to crush the evil, and the 
Romans, who had first given occasion to it, began soon to feel its 
eifects themselves. Gain and impunity encouraged the pirates to 
extend their robberies : property and merchandise of every kind, 
and belonging to every nation, were attacked without scruple ; 
insomuch that the Romans were obliged to notice these piracies 
as early as the year 651, and M. Antonius, the orator, who was i 
then praetor, received Cilicia as his province,*^^ and there obtain- 
ed some victories, which were held sufficient to entitle him to the 
honour of the smaller triumph, or ovation. The war with Mith- 
ridates followed in about fourteen years ; and during that war, 
the Cilician pirates offered their services to the king of Pontus 
against the Romans, '^^ and infested the iEgean so much with 
their light squadrons, that Sylla often felt considerable annoy- 
ance from them. But after the regular war was at an end, the 
pirates became more formidable than ever ; they were joined by 
many individuals who had been ruined during the late contest ; 
and now no longer wearing the semblance of auxiliaries to a 
regular government, they extended their cruises to all parts of the 
Mediterranean, and not only made partial descents, but attacked 
and often made themselves masters of fortified towns situated on 
"the coast. Under these circumstances, P. Servilius Vatia, who 
had been consul in the year 674, was in the year following sent 
to repress the pirates f and he appears to have held the com- 
mand during some years, in the course of which he defeated 
them at sea, and also stormed so many of their fortresses in Pam- 
phylia and the neighbouring country of Isauria, that he received 
the surname of Isauricus, and was considered to have put an end 
aitogether to the evil. These hopes, however, were soon disap- 

25 Cicero, de Oratore, I. 18. Livy, 27 Suetonius, in Caesare, 3. Strabo, XII. 
Epitome, LXVIIT. 663, edit. Xyland. 

26 Plutarch, in Porapeio, 24. Appian, 
de Bell. Mithridat. 92. 



X56 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE PIRATES OF CILICIA. 

pointed. The trade of piracy had been found so profitable, that 
many others of the maiitime states of Asia Minor were engaged 
in it as well as the Cilicians f^ and no partial losses could put a 
stop to a system carried on on so extensive a scale, A more 
vigorous attempt to repress it had been made, indeed, about the 
year 678, when M. Antonius, the son of the orator, and father 
of the triumvir, received an extraordinary command,^^ extending 
over all the sea coasts of the Mediterranean, that he might be en- 
abled to check the enemj^ at once in every quarter. But Antonius 
seems to have distinguished himself by nothing but his op- 
pression and his exactions from the allies of Rome, and his injus- 
tice towards neutral states : and the conduct of his subordinate 
officers greatly resembled his own. The robberies of the pirates 
continued unabated, and the behaviour of the Roman command- 
ers only added to the general misery. It is, however, by some 
particular facts that we may best convey a notion of the extent 
of the public losses and dishonour. In the year 680, the notorious 
C. Verres was appointed to command the province of Sicily as 
proprgetor ; and during his administration, a piratical chief named 
Heracleo,^" with a light squadron of four vessels, appeared on 
the coasts of the island, defeated and burnt an ill-provided fleet 
which had attempted to oppose him, and entered in a bravado 
into the very harbour of Syracuse, which, having surveyed at his 
leisure, he again put to sea without molestation. The communi- 
cation between Italy and Greece was intercepted during the whole 
summer ;3' several officers going abroad, with commissions from 
the senate, on the public service, were taken, and released for a 
ransom; and two praetors, with their lictors, while going abroad 
to take the command of their provinces, fell into the hands of the 
pirates. Descents were made on both coasts of Italy ; the har- 
bour of Caiela, which was full of Roman vessels, was entered be- 
fore the eyes of a Roman prsetor, and every thing in it was 
taken or destroyed ; the children of M. Antonius, the orator, at 
the very time, apparently, that their brother was commanding 
against the pirates, were carried oft' from ihe house of their 
family at Misenura. and were ransomed for a large sum of 
money. Nay, the mouth of the Tiber itself was not secure 
from insult ; and a fleet, which one of the consuls had been ap- 
pointed to command, was surprised and taken at Ostia, within 
twenty miles of Rome. While such were the aftronts sustained 
so near the seat of government itself, it will excite no sur- 
prise to hear that Cnidus, Samos, and Colophon, with 400 other 
cities, were taken at diflerent times by this daring enemy j^^ and 
that some of the most famous and richest temples, those of Juno 

23 Appian, de Bell. Milhridat. 92. S' Cicero, pro Lege Manilla, 1. 12. 

^ Cicero, in Verrem,II. 3, III. 91. 32 Plutarch, in Pompeio, 24. 

^ Cicero, in Verrem, V. 34, 35, 37. 



OPPRESSION OF ROMAN GOVERNORS IN THE PROVINCES. 157 

at Saraos, at Argos, and at Lacinium in Italy ; those of Apollo 
at Leucas and Actium ; those of Neptune at the Isthmus of 
Corinth, and at Taenarus; and that of Ceres and Proserpine in 
Samothrace, were violated and ransacked. The' revenues and 
the commerce of Rome were alike intercepted or suspended ; and 
the power of the repubUc was, for awhile, baffled or despised by 
an enemy, without a country and without a government, who 
possessed no other resources than the plunder which they had 
acquired by their piracies. 

In describmg the progress of the pirates, we have anticipated 
the mention of the scenes which would have pre- oppression of Roman 

T , , , /. . . ■ governors in the pro- 

sented themselves to the eyes 01 a voyager m tne vinces. 
seas, and on the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. If any acci- 
dent had led him to visit the interior of those coitntries, he would 
have found the violences of the pirates almost equalled by the 
tyranny of the Roman governors and officers. It appears that, 
for several years after the triumph of the aristocraticai party under 
Sylla, the crimes of the Roman magistrates and generals, and the 
excesses which their examples encouraged their soldiers to com- 
mit, were unusually great ;^3 ^nd that the corrupt state of the tri- 
bunals at Rome, where the judicial power was vested entirely in 
the hands of senators, ensured a frequent impunity to such offend- 
ers. When Cicero accused Verres, in the year 683, he did not 
hesitate to declare, that it was the wish of the provinces that the 
laws against the maladministration of Roman officers might be 
repealed ;^^ for, whilst they existed, corrupt governors increased 
their extortions, that they might have wherewithal to reward their 
advocates, and to bribe their judges, in case they should be brought 
to trial ; and the most respectable of the Romans, and the warmest 
supporters of the cause of the nobility, Q,. Catulus and Cn. Pom- 
pey, confessed and deplored the truth of this statement. History 
has preserved to us the names of Cn. Dolabella, who was tried 
for his misgovernment of Macedonia ; of another Cn. Dolabella, 
who was accused of corruption and cruelty in Cilicia;^^ of M. 
Antonius, who has been already mentioned as infamous for his 
general misconduct in the extensive command which had been 
intrusted to him : of his brothei', C. Antonius, who was brought 
to trial for his exactions in Greece f^ of Q,. Calidius, who was 
charged with oppression in Spain ;^^ of Manius Fonteius, whom 
Cicero defended against the complaints of the Gauls ; and above 
all. of C. Verres, who for three years practised every kind of cruelty 
and corruption in Sicily. Besides these, were officers who are 
charged with no personal corruption, yet whose conduct towards 

33 .Cicero, pro Lege Manilia, 13.22. 3^ Q,. Cicero, de Pelitione Consula- 

34 Cicero, in Verrem, actio. I. 14, 15. tflis, 2. 

35 Cicero, in Verrem, I. 38. 37 Cicero, in Verrem, act. I. 13 ; III. 

25, et Asconius, in act. I. in Verrem. 



158 OPPRESSION OP ROMAN GOVERNORS IN THE PROVINCES. 

foreign states was harsh and unjust. P. iServihus has been 
already mentioned as having gained several victories over the 
pirates in PamphyHa and Isauria. Amongst other places, they 
had occupied Olympus, a city of Lycia ; and Servilius besieged 
and took the town from them. The Lycians, to whom it of right 
belonged, had carefully abstained from imitating the example of 
their neighbours, ^^ and had taken no part in the depredations of 
the pirates ; yet the ornaments of the city were carried otf as spoils 
to Rome, and the people of Olympus were deprived of a portion 
of their territory. 

A Gaulish chief, while exhorting his countrymen to maintain 
their independence against the arms of Rome, is represented by 
Caesar as describing,, in two words, the degraded condition of that 
part of Gaul which was already a Roman province. ^^ He called 
it " subjecta securibus," '' subject to the lictor's axe ;" and although 
the last extremities of tyranny might have been comparatively 
rare, yet, in fact, the lives of the provincials were subject to the 
arbitrary will of the governors, without any immediate protection, 
and too often with only a feeble prospect of retribution upon their 
oppressor. AVhen Yerres was in Asia," as quasstor to Cn. Dola- 
bella, he was sent by him on a mission to Nicomedes, king of 
Bithynia, and on his way he passed through Lampsacus. He 
was there informed that Philodamus, one of the principal citizens, 
had an unmarried daughter of extraordinary beauty ; and in order 
to effect the infamous design which he instantly entertained, he 
caused one of his creatures to be lodged at the house of Philoda- 
mus. This man, whose name was Rubrius, was entertained with 
the greatest hospitality, and was desired to name the persons whom 
he wished to form the company ; Philodamus sending even his 
own son to sup at the house of a friend, that he might have room 
for a greater number of Roman officers. Towards the close of 
the evening, Rubrius called upon Philodamus to introduce his 
daughter to their party ; a proposal which, according to the man- 
ners of the Greeks, was one of the utmost insult and indelicacy. 
The father refused, and his guests, assisted by their slaves and 
by some of the lictors of Verres, proceeded to assault him in his 
own house, and to threaten the honour of his daughter. He con- 
trived to inform his son of his danger, and the young man instantly 
flew to the house, followed by a crowd of the people of Lampsacus, 
who were roused by the report of so gross an outrage. In the 
scuffle that ensued, Rubrius and some of his slaves were wounded, 
and a lictor was killed ; and on the next day, when it was known 
who was the original author of the attempt, the people crowded to 
the house where Verres lodged, and were with difficulty pre- 
ss Strabo, XIV. 762, edit. Xyland. 39 De Bello Gallico, VII. 77. 
Cicero, in Verrem, I. 21. de Lege Agrar, ^° Cicero, in Verrem, I. 24, et seq. 
I. 2. 



CONCLUSION OP THE WAR WITH THE GLADIATORS. 159 

vented from exercising on him a summary vengeance. He 
escaped, however, and Philodamus and his son were brought to 
trial before C. Nero, the governor of the province of Asia, for the 
death of the Hctor. At the earnest request of Yerres, Dolabella 
left his own province of Cilicia to assist at the trial ; Verres him- 
self was present also, and he and Dolabella used all their influence, 
both by vehemence and supplication, to procure the condemnation 
of the prisoners. Nero, a weak and timid man, yielded to their 
instances, and Philodamus and his son were beheaded in the 
market-place of Larapsacus. Dolabella was afterwards accused, 
as we have seen, of corruption in his own province, and was con- 
demned to exile, which he underwent ; but Yerres was elected 
prsetor, and exercised jurisdiction both in Rome and in Sicily ; 
nor was he ever questioned for his conduct at Lampsacus, till after 
the perpetration of numberless additional crimes, when Cicero, 
his accuser, mentioned this early enormity as preparatory to the 
series of his greater and more recent offences, Nero, it should be 
observed, by whose sentence Philodamus and his son were put to 
death, was never brought to trial at all. It is not possible that 
actions so dreadful as this should have been of very frequent oc- 
currence ; still the circumstances which we have related were far 
from singular ; and every province in the empire could probably 
at some time have produced instances of equal, or even of greater, 
enormity. But that one such act should have been committed 
with impunity, shows how wretched was the condition of those 
countries that were subject to the yoke of the Roman government. 
In tracing the course of events from the year 680 to 690, the 
only wars which will here demand our attention conclusion of the war 
are those with Spartacus and with the pirates. The u.'c. est. 
beginnings of both have been already noticed ; and we have seen 
that in the year 680, Spartacus was carrying devastation over 
some of the finest districts of Italy. In the following year a part 
of his forces was destroyed by Q,. Arrius, one of the preetors ;^' but 
he himself, intending to carry into execution his plan of escaping 
over the Alps into Germany, was encountered by Cn. Lentulus, 
one of the consuls, and gained a complete victory over him ; after 
which he engaged and defeated another army, commanded by 
the other consul, L. Gellius, and the lately victorious praetor, Q. 
Arrius, All obstacles to his march being thus removed, he con- 
tinued his course as far as Cisalpine Gaul, where he found himself 
again opposed by a third army, under the command of C. Cassius, 
one of the consuls of the former year, and Cn. Manlius, one of the 
praetors. He attacked this new enemy near Mutina, and gained a 
third complete victory ; but it appears that these repeated successes 
intoxicated him or his followers, and instead of continuing their 

« Livy, Epitom. XCVL Plutarch, in Crasso, 9. Floras, IIL 20. 



160 CONCLUSION OF THE WAR WITH THE GLADIATORS. 

march to the Alps, which they might have eflfected with perfect 
safety, they returned towards the south, dazzled by fantastic hopes 
of the conquest and plunder of Rome itself But finding, proba- 
bly, that any attempt upon the capital was impracticable, Spartacus 
passed the winter without venturing on any exploit of importance, 
maintaining his soldiers, we may suppose, upon the plunder of 
the country. Dissensions, meanwhile, crept in amongst his fol- 
lowers, which proved his ruin. The Gauls and Germans still 
wished to return to their own country,^ '^ and finding that they could 
not prevail on the majority of the army to join them, they separated 
from Spartacus, and commenced their march to the northward by 
themselves. The senate, on their part, had com- 
mitted the conduct of the war to M. Crassus, who 
was the praetor ; and the new general, according to the practice 
which we have before noticed among the Roman commanders 
after a series of disasters, began his career by severe executions 
upon the soldiers of the defeated armies, and having thus taught 
them to dread him more than the enemy, he first assaulted the 
division of the Gauls and Germans, and put the greatest part of 
them to the sword. He then engaged with the main army under 
Spartacus, and having won a second victory, obliged him to retreat 
to the southern extremity of Italy. It was the wish of the gladia- 
tors to effect their passage into Sicily, in the hope of reviving the 
insurrections of the slaves, which had raged with such violence 
in that island not many years before. To accomplish their pur- 
pose, they entered into a treaty with some of the Cilician pirates, 
who chanced to be cruising in the neighbourhood ; but the pirates 
are said to have first secured the money for their transport,^ ^ and 
then to have sailed away without fulfilling their part of the en- 
gagement. Spartacus then endeavoured to construct rafts on the 
Italian shore,^^ but the active pursuit of Crassus rendered this 
impracticable, and he was soon blockaded in a small peninsula 
near Rhegiuiai, in which he had taken refuge. He eftected his es- 
cape, however, by passing unobserved, in a dark and stormy night, 
through the enemy's lines, and with the troops that still remained 
to him, he directed his march towards the mountains of Petilia 
in Lucania.^5 Here the tidings of the return of Pompey from 
Spain, made both Crassus and Spartacus anxious to risk a battle 
before that dreaded general could take a part in the contest. Ac- 
cordingly a desperate action ensued, in Mdiich Spartacus was de- 
feated and slain, and his army dispersed or destroyed : but Pom- 
pey laid a claim to a sh.ire in the victory, because he fell in with 
some parties of fugitives who had escaped from the battle, and 
cut them to pieces. A considerable number of prisoners were 

<2 Livy, Epitom. XCVII. Appian, de *^ Cicero, in Verrem, V. 2. 
Bell. Civil. I. 118. 45 Plutarch, in Crasso, 11. Appian, 

" Plutarch, in Crasso, 10. I. 120. 



CONSULSHIP OF POMPEY AND CRASSUS. iQl 

taken, who were crucified along the road from Rome to Capua, 
and their bodies extended at intervals along the whole of the 
distance. 

The war with the pirates was not concluded till four years 
afterwards ; and some events occurred in the inter- consulship ofpompey 

. 1 , . , .,, . . T-v anri Crassus. 

vennig peiiod, which will require our notice. Fom- u. c. ess. 
pey, although we liave so often had occasion to mention his name, 
had as yet held no public magistracy, and was therefore precluded, 
by one of Sylla's laws, from offering himself as a candidate for 
the consulship. But the extraordinary circumstances attending 
his career, and the services he had rendered to the aristocratical 
party on so many occasions, disposed the senate to regard him 
with unusual favour; while, on the other hand, he had always 
possessed the affection of the people, who seem to have excepted 
him ffom the general aversion which they entertained towards 
the partisans of Sylla. At this time his return from Spain was 
looked forward to by the popular party with an anxioUs hope that 
he would become their leader, and enable them to repeal some of 
those laws which, as they thought, had so greatly encroached 
upon their liberties. Their chief wish was for the complete 
restoration of the tribunitian power; not only for its own sake, 
but as preparatory to effecting a reform in the constitution of the 
courts of justice.^ ^ The natural feeUngs of the people at large 
were shocked by the long series of crimes which their officers 
were continually committing in the provinces with impunity; and 
so long as the judges were taken only from among the men who 
had enjoyed or were expecting to succeed to the commands in 
which these excessess were perpetrated, it was not likely that the 
evil would be effectually remedied. Ijooking then upon Pompey 
as on a young man of popular quahties, who would be glad to 
acquire a claim to the lasting gratitude of the majority of his 
countrymen, the people welcomed his appearance with joy ; and 
a decree of the senate being passed,^'' allowing him to be a can- 
didate for the consulship, although he had not held the previous 
offices of quaestor and prastor, he was elected consul, together with 
M. Licinius Crassus, who had distinguished himself by his recent 
victory over the gladiators. Pompey did not disappoint the hopes 
which were formed of him. After his election," when he made 
his first speech to the people before entering on his office, he 
promised to restore the tribunitian power, and to endeavour to 
remedy the grievances of the provinces, and the corrupt state of 
the courts of justice. His first declaration was received with mur- 
murs of delight ; but when he spoke of reforming the courts of 
justice, he was interrupted by a loud and general shout of ap- 

46 Cicero, in Verrem, actio. I. 15. *8 Cicero, in Verrem, actio. I. 15. 

ii Cicero, pro Lege Manilla, 21. 



162 THE CENSORSHIP REVIVED. 

plause. Accordingly his consulship is memorable for Ihe repeal 
of Sylla's laws respecting the tribuneship/' and the restoration of 
that office to its original privileges; and also for the law of L. 
Aurelius Cotta, one of the prsetors, which was passed with the 
sanction of Pompey, and which provided that the judges should 
hereafter be chosen partly from among the senators, partly from 
the equestrian order, and partly from the tribuni gerarii.^" These 
last, as far as appears, Avere plebeians, possessed of a certain 
property,^' and on that account were appointed to act as agents 
for the payment of the legions, it being their office to receive the 
money for that purpose from the quaestors of the city, and to 
negotiate the business of transmitting it to the provincial qusestors, 
that it might by them be issued to the troops. The object of the 
law in adding this additional class to those of the senate and the 
knights, was to establish the courts of justice on a less exclusive 
system than before, while it endeavoured to obviate the evil of 
corruption amongst the judges, by providing that they should only 
be chosen from among men of competent fortune. At the con- 
clusion of the year, which had been marked by such welcome 
acts, Pompey increased his popularity still more, by declaring that 
he would not accept the government of any province f^ and 
accordingly, when his consulship was expired, he continued to 
reside at Rome as a private individual. 

The extreme disorders of the times had filled men, according 
The censorship re- to the usual courso of opiuious, with tlie desire of 
yiwf' ^discontX- scciug the arm of authority strengthened ; and thus 
anceofit. ^]^g censorial power,^^ which was, on many ac- 

counts, justly obnoxious, and which had been discontinued since 
the beginning of the late civil wars, was now revived agreeably 
to the general wish of the people. If was exercised with great 
severity by the censors, Cn. Lentulus and li. Gellius, who removed 
sixty-four persons from the lists of the senate f* and probably 
gratified the public feeling by stigmatizing so large a portion of 
the nobility. They are charged, indeed, with having listened too 
lightly to popular reports," and Avith having affixed their censure 
on some characters without any sufficient knowledge of their de- 
merits. Instances, too, occur of their disagreement with one 
another,^® and of one of them disapproving and acting in opposition 
to the sentence of his colleague. But, on the whole, it is probable 
that the revival of the censorship was beneficial ; and faulty as 

« Cicero, de Legibus, III. 11. Livy, "' Velleius Paterculus, 11.31. 

Epitome, XCVII. " Cicero, in Q. Caecilinni, 3. 

"" Asconius, in Ciceronis pro Cornelio *■• Livy, Epitome, XCVIII. 

Oration. I. Cicero, ad Quintum Fratrem, *^ Cicero, pro CUienlio, 47. 

II. epist. VI. Cicero, Philippica, i. 8. *® Cicero, pro Cluentio, 47. 

*' Facciolati Lexicon, in voce " Tri- 
bunus.'' 



LAW OF A. GABINIUS. 



163 



were the old institutions of the commonweahh, they were far 
better than the general lawlessness, and tyranny, and corruption, 
which had of late superseded them. 

The evils of the piratical war still continued; nor did the 
consuls of the two following years do anything The war with the 
effectual to remove them. We have seen that the u.c!m6. 
experiment had been already tried of appointing one man, with 
supreme command, to act in every quarter of the Mediterranean ; 
but the misconduct of the individual selected, M. Antonius, had 
disappointed the hopes which had been enteitained of its success. 
There was, however, another person in the commonwealth, 
whose personal character was hkely to add weight to whatever 
authority was intrusted to him, whose high military talents fitted 
him to combat with the enemies of the state, while his integrity 
and humanity would protect and conciliate its subjects and allies. 
Accordingly, in the consulship of C. Piso and u.c.ese. 
Manius Acilius Glabrio, Aulus Gabinius," one of granting tnettmS 
the tribunes, proposed to the people that the man- pomper™'"°" *" 
agement of the war with the pirates should be committed to a 
single person for the term of three years ; and that the power of 
the officer thus chosen should extend over every part of the em- 
pire, with authority to raise such supplies of men and money as 
he should think proper, and that he should have under him a 
certain number of lieutenants of senatorian rank, nominated by 
the senate. Gabinius was known to be a partisan of Pompey, 
and his character is said to have been bad ; his own motives, 
therefore, in proposing this measure may well be suspected; but 
the measure itself, if stripped of some of its clauses, seems not to 
have been justly blameable. The people took it up with eager- 
ness, and immediately fixed upon Pompey as the individual to be 
appointed to this extraordinary command. But the high aristo- 
cratical party now began to pause in lavishing upon him unusual 
honours. His late conduct, during his consulship, had shown that 
he was not insensible to the welfare of the people at large, nor 
indifferent to the charms of popularity. He could not, therefore, 
be considered as an undoubted supporter of the nobility on all 
occasions ; and his personal renown seemed to raise him above 
their level. The motion of Gabinius was therefore generally op- 
posed in the senate, and especially by Q.. Catulus and Q,. Horten- 
sius f^ and the negative of two of the tribunes, L. Trebellius and 
L. Roscius, was secured, according to the old practice of the aris- 
tocracy, to stop the progress of the law. Both parties, as usual, 
had at the very outset of the dispute resorted to violence : the per- 
son of Gabinius, we are told, was threatened in the senate when 

" Cicero, pro Lege Manilla, 18. Dion ^^ Cicero, pro Lege ManiM, 18. Dion 
Cassius, XXXVI. 10, edit. Leunclavii. Cassius, 31. Velleius Paterculus, II. 11. 



164 ' POMPEY SUBDUES THE PIRATES. 

he first announced there his intended law ; and the mob, in re- 
turn, beset the senate-house, and having laid bold on C. Piso the 
consnl. were with difficulty persuaded by Gabinius to let him go 
without injury. But a more mischievous step was taken by the 
proposer of the measure, when he proceeded to imitate the con- 
duct of Tiberins Gracchus i^^ and finding Trebellius obstinate in 
his opposition, submitted to the assembly the question of his degra- 
dation from his office. Trebellius, however, was less lesolute 
than Octavius ; and before the eighteenth tribe was called on to 
vote, he withdrew his negative upon the law. Yet the people 
listened with re. pect to Q,. Catulus, when he, having been ex- 
pressly called upon by Gabinius to deliver his sentiments, endea- 
vouied, in manly and temperate language, to prove to them the 
mischiefs of the intended measure. That he should have pre- 
vailed, indeed, was not to be expected, but the aristocracy disap- 
pointed any personal views which Gabinins might have had in 
procniiiig so extensive a command for Pompey ; for allhongh 
Pompey himself made application in his behalf, the senate refused 
to insert the name of Gabinius amongst those of the fifteen lieu- 
tenants who were to act under his orders.®" 

It was late in the year when the law of Gabinius was car- 
pompey reduces the i'i>cl j*" but Pompoy employed the winter most 
pirates 10 submission, diligently lu makliig immense preparations for the 
war. He divided the care of the different parts of the Mediterra- 
nean among his several lieutenants, resolving himself to superin- 
tend their pioceediugs in every qnaiter, and to bestow his peculiar 
attention wherever it should be most needed. Before the winter 
was well ended, he put to sea, and deeming it important to open, 
as soon as possible, the communication between the capital and 
those countries from which it was usually supplied with corn, he 
sailed first to Sicily, thence crossed over to Afiica, and having 
carefully scoured the coast there, he returned to Sardinia, station- 
ing a sufficient fl et off the island, and strong guards on diflerent 
points along the shore, as he had done in the two provinces which 
he had previously visited. These operations were completed, 
according to Plutarch,®^ in less than six weeks; and he then re- 
turned to Italy, where he remained for a short time, disposing his 
forces for the protection of both coasts of that peninsula, and 
sending squadrons and land foiccs to secure the provinces of 
Spain, Gaul, and Illyricuni. The eflect of all these measures 
Avas to hunt out the pirates from all their harmts in the western 
quarters of the Mediterranean, and to diive them gradually back 
to the scat of their main power in Cilicia. Thither, accordingly, 

*• Cicero, pro Cornclio,et Asconii Com- *' Cicero, pro Lege Manilia, 12. 
meniarius. ^^ Plutarcli, in Fonipeio, 2C. 

*" Cicero, pro Lege Manilia, 19. 



WAR OF CRETE. 165 

Pompey sailed in pursuit of them ;^^ and expecting to meet with 
a long and obstinate resistance in the strongholds on that coast, 
he provided himself with every thing necessary for a succession 
of sieges. But the fame of his personal character went before 
him ; and the vigour of his military operations, combined with 
the humanity which he had shown to those of the pirates who 
first fell into his hands, at once deterred the enemy from continu- 
ing to oppose him, and encouraged them to trust themselves to his 
mercy. On his arrival off the coasts of Cilicia, fortresses and 
ships were successively surrendered to him without a blow. Nor 
did he deceive the confidence thus reposed in him; but after' re- 
ceiving the submissions of the pirates, after delivering the prisoners 
whom he found in their hands, and becoming master of all their 
resources, he took measures for reclaiming the inhabitants of those 
countries from that rude and wretched state of life which tempted 
them to robbery. The town of Soli, with some others in the 
neighbouihood,** had been lately deprived of their citizens by 
Tigranes, king of Armenia, who had transplanted them into Up- 
per Asia, to people his new capital Tigranocerta. Into the towns 
thus deserted, Pompey brouglit some of the pirates who had sur- 
rendered, and settled them in a situation where they might natu- 
rally be led to taste and to value the blessings of peace and civil- 
ization ; while he removed others into some of the districts in the 
interior,^' which, perhaps, their own incursions, on former occa- 
sions, had reduced to desolation, and placed them where the con- 
stant sight of the sea might not tempt them to resume their former 
occupation of piracy. By this admirable conduct Pompey ob- 
tained a glory very different from that usually gained by Roman 
generals ; and in seven weeks from the time of his leaving Italy 
for the East,^^ he had cleared every corner of the sea from the 
enemy, and had provided for the stability of his victoiy by those 
measures of wisdom and goodness which alone, in public as well 
as in private conduct, can permanently insure a happy result. 

Whilst he was thus employed in Cilicia, he received a depu- 
tation from the people of Crete, who were at this war of crete. . cen- 
time attacked by Q,. Metellus, a Roman proconsul, §ya. Meteiiu-.'^^" 
and who, refusing to submit to him, were willing to trust them- 
selves to the mercy of Pompey. It appears that M. Antonius." 
amongst various other acts of injustice which had signalized his 
command, had commenced hostilities against the Cretans without 
any just provocation, from the mere ambition to conquer that fa- 
mous island, which had thus long preserved its independence. 

«' Cicero, pro Lege ManiliA, 12. Flo- ^^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 32. 

rus. III. 6. Appian, de Bello Mithridatico, "^ Cicero, pro Lege Manilla, 12. 

96. " Florus, III. 7. Asconius. in Ciceron. 

" Dion Cassius, XXXV. 2 ; XXXVI. Divinat. in Ca;ciliuin, 17. 
18. Appian, 96. 



IQQ CONaUEST OF CRETE BY METELLUS. 

He failed, however, in his attempt, and had himself died whilst 
engaged in it. But the Romans, little solicitous about the origin 
of their wars, fitiidiiig that one of their officers had engaged them 
in a quarrel with the Cretans, resolved to continue it ; and Q.. 
Metellus, who had been consul in the year 684, was sent, after 
his consulship, into Crete, as his province. He carried on his 
operations very successfully, and was looking forward to the 
speedy reduction of the whole island, when the Cretans, hearing 
of the extraordinary powers committed lo Pompey, and of his 
merciful treatment to those whom he had conquered, sent a depu- 
tation to him in Pamphylia,^^ requesting him to receive their sub- 
mission. Crete, with every other island in the Mediterranean, 
was included within the limits of Pompey's authority ; he sent, 
therefore, to Metellus, desiring him to abstain from further hostih- 
ties, and at the same time despatched Octavius, an officer of his 
own, to receive the offered surrender. Metellus treated the mes- 
sage with contempt f^ and when Octavius threw himself into 
the town of Lappa, trusting that his character as a Roman offi- 
cer would protect the inhabitants, Metelkis besieged and took the 
place, and put the Cilicians, who formed the garrison, to death. 
Octavius then employed a part of the force under Pompey's com- 
mand, which L. Sisenna, one of his lieutenants, had brought over 
from Greece, in defending some of the remaining cities in Crete 
against Metellus ; but being too weak to act with efiect in their 
behalf, he was obhged at last to quit the island, and Metellus 
then soon completed the conquest of every part of it. His con- 
duct was marked with the usual cruelty of the Romans, embit- 
tered, in this instance, by personal irritation at the preference 
which the Cretans had shown for Pompey. After the ordinary 
succession of executions and exactions,''" Crete was reduced to 
the form of a Roman province, and Metellus arranged the affairs 
of the island as he thought proper. But the dispute which arose 
from his disobedience to Pompey's authority, was for some time 
an obstacle to his enjoying the honour of a triumph, till some 
years afterwards the senate, being more and more alienated from 
Pompey, thought proper to grant it.^' 

** Cicero, pro Lege Manilia, 12. his vanitj' was flattered by the preference 
^ Dion Cassius. XXXVI. 8. whicii the Cretans showed for him ; but it 
'" Fiorus, III. 7. Livy, Epitome, C. is also liiiely that he, who was acting in 
■" Theconductof Pompey in this trans- Cilicia on such wise and merciful views, 
action is represented in a very different was eager to stop the cruelties of Metellus, 
light by some modern writers, who have and to give the Cretans, a people unjustly 
echoed the sentiments of Plutarch. They attacked by ihe Romans in the outset, the 
impute Pompey's behaviour to a mean de- benefit of his own humane policy. Be this 
sire of robbing Metellus of the glory of as it may, as Pompey's commission cer- 
liis conquest ; and Plutarch dwells upon tainly extended to Crete, Metellus was 
the extravagance of his actually supporting guilty of an act of rebellion in resisting 
pirates against the power that was employ- his authority, and became himself the rob- 
ed in punishing them. It is probable that ber and the outlaw, in persisting to attack 



TRIBUNESHIP OF C. CORNELIUS. jg7 

In this part of the history of the internal state of Rome, we 
must again remind the reader of the necessary imperfection of 
our account. The varying objects pursued by parties and by in- 
dividuals at diiferent times, can only be explained by so full a 
knowledge of the circumstances and characters as should either 
remove or account for that which apparently was inconsistent ; 
and the same knowledge could alone enable us to judge correctly 
of the merits of several measures, which otherwise we might ap- 
prove or condemn presumptuously and erroneously. Such a 
knowledge, however, cannot now be obtained, and the conjec- 
tures by which we have endeavoured to supply it we wish al- 
ways to propose with a full consciousness of their uncertainty ; 
for it may happen that some detached passage of an ancient au- 
thor may have escaped our researches, which, had we known it, 
would have obliged us to alter, or to qualify, the theory which 
we had ventured to offer. With this caution we proceed to trace 
the disorders from which, henceibrward, scarcely a year, during 
the existence of the commonwealth, was exempt. 

Amongst the evils by which the state was beset, that of ob- 
taining public offices by undue means, was at this Tribuneshipofc.cor. 
time severely felt.'^^ Like many other grievances, uic'.W 
it was loudly complained of by the people, and some measure 
was called for that might remove or lessen it. C. Cornelius, who 
was one of the tribunes for the year 6.86, resolved to take up the 
subject, and proposed to bring in a law which should punish all 
bribery or undue influence in elections in the severest manner. 
The senate wishing the measure to proceed from themselves 
rather than from one of the tribunes, directed C. Calpurnius Piso, 
who was then consul, to prepare a law to the same effect with 
that of Cornelius, except that its penalties were somewhat less 
severe. Cornelius, on his side, regarded this interference of the 
senate with jealousy and suspicion, and the people, in general, 
violently opposed the law of Piso ;" as if its only object were to 
battle and disappoint their wish for an effective check to the evil 
complained of. Some serious tumults appear to have arisen ; and 
the consul, provoked at the opposition with wh^h he met, called 
upon every citizen, who was a well-wisher to his country, to 
assist in procuring the enactment of the law. This was 
deemed equivalent to summoning them to support the consular 
authority by force, as was usual in cases of extreme danger ; but 
even this appeal failing of its effect, and the election for the ensu- 

places protected by a superior officer of his served for his disobedience. Plutarch, in 

government. It may be a question whether Pompeio, 29. 

it was owing to the mildness of Pompey's 7* Dion Cassius, XXXVI. 18, edit. Le- 

temper, or to the strength of the aristocrat- unclav. 

leal faction, that Metellus was never '* Cicero, pro Cornelio, I. Fragm. 

brought to trial and punished as he de- 

12 



158 PROPOSAL TO REGULATE THE POWER OF THE SENATE. 

ing year drawing on/* and being preceded by the usual scenes 
of violence and corruption during the canvass, the senate, by 
their own sole authority, decreed that the law should be enacted, 
and voted a gnard to the consuls for the maintenance of the public 
peace. It had happened that Cornelius had been already disgusted 
with the conduct of the senate on another occasion during his 
tribuneship. The provinces and allies of the commonwealth 
were in the habit of often sending deputies to Rome,^^ sometimes 
to compliment the officers who had exercised the government 
amongst them, sometimes to complain of their tyranny, and 
sometimes to make interest among their friends at Rome, to pro- 
cure some measure which they deemed expedient for their coun- 
try. It often happened that the deputies were detained at Rome 
for a considerable period ; and in the want of those resources 
which modern commerce has devised to facilitate the obtaining 
money in foreign countries, they were obliged to borrow the sums 
tliey wanted of wealthy individuals, and could only procure them 
by engaging to pay an exorbitant interest. Many of the provin- 
cial cities were thus burthened with a debt ; and their creditors 
were not unfrequently employed under the proconsul or prsetorof 
the province,'^® and were then ready to abet him in all his pro- 
ceedings, in order to purchase the aid of his authority in recover- 
ing, by a summary process, the money that was due to them. 
The evils and the scandal of this system were equally great, and 
C. Cornelius had moved the senate to repress them, by forbidding 
any Roman citizen to lend money to the deputies of foreign states 
or countries. But the senate did not second his wishes ; and this 
had already given him a handle for inveighing against that body 
in the assemblies of the people. When, therefore, the} had again 
thwarted his projects of reform,^^ by substituting a weaker mea- 
sure in the place of his proposed law against bribery, he deter- 
mined to attack one of the privileges which they had gradually 
usurped in later times, and which had degenerated into an abuse 
He proposes a law to of a flagrant uaturc. This was no other than a 
sfngpoter^'oahesen-" powcr of dispcuslng wlth the laws in particular 
"«■ cases : such, for example, as that of Pompey, who 

had been allowed, by a decree of the senate, to ofler himself as a 
candidate for the consulship, before he had been praetor or quaestor, 
in direct violation of the existing laws. In former times, these 
dispensations, after they had passed the senate, had, in theory at 
least, if not in practice, required the sanction of the people to give 
them validity ; but by degrees this sanction became so merely a 
form, that it was neglected altogether ; and the usual expression 
in the decrees of the senate, " that the matter should be submit- 

" Dion Cassius, XXXVI. 19. " Cicero, in Verrem, I. 29. 

'* Asconius, Argumentum in Ciceron. " Asconiup, Argumentum in Ciceron. 
pro Cornelio, I. pro Corneiio, L 



IT IS NEGATIVED, BUT PASSED IN AN AMENDED SHAPE. IQQ 

ted to the approval of the people," was at last omitted as super- 
fluous. This, perhaps, might have been a change well suited to 
the altered circumstances of the commonwealth ; but it was ac- 
companied by another which was nothing but an abuse. These 
dispensations were often granted by some of those members who 
took an active part in public business, when none but themselves 
were present in the senate-house ; and thus the privilege was en- 
grossed, in fact, by a few individuals of the highest rank and 
consideration, who availed themselves of it as of a valuable store 
of patronage. To correct this system, C Cornelius proposed to 
revive and enforce the old principle of the constitution, that no 
one should be exempted from the observance of any law, except 
by the authority of the people. The aristocratical party, resist- 
ing this alteration, procured the negative of one of the tribunes, 
P. Servilius Globulus, to stop the progress of the proposed law. 
"When, therefore, the day arrived on which the question was to 
come before the people, and the crier began to repeat aloud the 
terms of the law, with a clerk standing behind to prompt him. Globu- 
lus forbade both the clerk and the crier to proceed, rtis negatived, but 
Cornelius then took the law from the hands of the Kapr"""""*"' 
clerk and read it himself; not intending, as his friends declared, to 
propose it to the people in defiance of his colleague's negative, but 
merely to satisfy himself what the provisions were which he was 
not allowed to submit to their decision.^^ However, the consul, C. 
Piso, who witnessed the fact, interpreted it in a different manner, 
and loudly exclaimed that CojneUus was destroying the very es- 
sence of the tribunitian power. The multitude received this 
speech with violent expressions of displeasure ; and when Piso 
sent his lictors to arrest some of those whom he observed as most 
outrageous, the lictors were resisted, their fasces were broken, and 
stones were thrown by some persons at the extremity of the 
crowd against the consul himself But Cornelius, far from abet- 
ting these disorders, immediately broke up the assembly, and re- 
linquished his law; and in order to show his willingness to con- 
ciUate his opponents, he brought it forward again without its ob- 
noxious clauses, proposing merely that no dispensation from the 
laws should be considered as valid, unless two hundred members 
had been present in the senate when it was granted ; and that 
although the sanction of the people was necessary as a point of 
form, yet that it should not be lawful for any tribune to negative a 

"* Cicero, in Vatininm,2. Defendeba- when the Ethiopian eunuch was reading 
tur non recitandi causa legisse sed recog- the Scriptures to himself, as he travelled in 
noscendi. It seems that persons were in his chariot, he evidently pronounced the 
the habit of reading aloud, even when words aloud ; for it is said, that '• Philp 
reading by themselves alone, and thus the heard him reading ;" whereas now, the 
action of Cornelius might have had no natural expression would be, that a man 
other motive than that which his friends reading alone in a carriage was seen read- 
represented. In the Acts of the Apostles, ing. 



170 



CORNELIUS IS BROUGHT TO TRIAL. 



dispensation which had regularly passed the senate/' In this 
amended state the law was too reasonable to be openly opposed ; 
but the leading senators were greatly offended that their particu- 
lar influence should be at all diminished. Another salutary mea- 
sure was brought forward and carried by Cornelius, which ap- 
pears to have been entirely free from any factious design or ten- 
dency. It seems that the praetors had a large discretionary power 
in the administration of justice, and that it was usual for every 
prastor,*" when he entered upon his office, to publish a proclama- 
tion, declaring, generally, the principles on which his decisions 
would be founded during the year. But from these principles the 
praetors continually deviated, alleging, we may suppose, that the 
equity of particular cases required them to depart from their 
general rule. Whatever may be the advantages or disadvan- 
tages of leaving much to the discretion of judges in well-ordered 
governments, and in a tolerably pure state of public morals, we 
may well conceive that with such officers as the Roman praetors 
are described to have been at this period, whatever discretionary 
power they possessed, was likely to be abused for their own pur- 
poses. Accordingly, Cornelius was listened to with general ap- 
Law to abridge the probatiou, when he proposed a law obliging the 
omfp°r*tore^°^" praetors to conform in all cases to the principles 
laid down in their own proclamations : and this measure also was 
carried without any open resistance. It is said that he brought 
forward several other laws during his tribuneship, which were 
negatived by some of his colleagues ; but the particulars are not 
Cornelius is brought mentioned. The resentment, however, which his 
u.c."687. conduct had excited, broke out as soon as his year 

of office was expired. He was accused of what, perhaps, may 
best be expressed in English by the general term of " high crimes 
The trial broken offby^ and misdemeanours ;^' but on the day appointed 
*"°'- for the trial, P. Cassius, the praetor, who was to act 

as judge, did not appear ; and a mob assembling at the instiga- 
tion, as it is said, of Manilius, one of the tribunes, assaulted the 
accusers, threatening them with death, if they did not abandon 
their accusation, and, finally, obliged them to fly for their lives. 
Cornelius appears to have had no share in the riot ; but his trial 
He is tried again and was again rcsumcd in the year following, and he 
ui'a 688.' was arraigned chiefly for having read aloud his law 

to the people, after another tribune had interposed his negative 
against it. On this point, Q,. Catulus, Q,. Hortensius, Q,. Metellus 
Pius, and L. Lucullus, all came forward to give their evidence 

'* Ne quis in senatu legibus solveretur, "" Asconiug, ubi supra. Conf. Dion 
nisi cc adfuissent, neve quis, quum soiutus Cass. XXXVI. 19, 
esset, intercederet, quum de eare ad popu- "' " De Majestate." 
lum ferretur. Asconius, Argumentum in 
Ciceron. pro Cornelio, I. 



TRIBUNESHIP OP C. MANLIUS. 1'7| 

with a strong leaning against him ; while, on the other hand, 
Cicero undertook his defence, and is said to have conducted it 
with the greatest ability in two speeches, of which, unfortunately, 
only a few fragments remain to us. His eloquence was received 
with bursts of applause from the assembled people,* ^ ^nd Cor- 
nelius, as far as we can learn, was acquitted.*^ 

We have dwelt the longer upon the tribuneship and laws of 
Cornelius, because he appears to have been one of the few men 
of his time who advocated firmly and temperately the real inter- 
ests of the people ; and because the opposition which he met with 
from the aristocracy, shows how much they were inclined to resist 
not only the seditious, but even the fairest and most moderate 
supporters of reform, as if every thing were mischievous which 
did not tend to maintain their exclusive ascendency. At a crisis 
such as that in which Rome was now placed, there were few 
popular leaders who were disposed to imitate the temper and judg- 
ment of Cornelius, and the treatment which he met with was like- 
ly still more to diminish the number. Men of real sense and pat- 
riotism were deterred from the task of redressing grievances, 
when they found that they could only succeed at the price of 
provoking a strong resistance on the part of the nobility, and, 
perhaps, dangerously exciting the passions of the multitude. But 
profligate adventurers, to whom sedition was in itself an end, in- 
stead of being regarded with aversion even as the means of ob- 
taining some real good, were rejoiced to find the senate so selfish 
and short-sighted. They could then say, with more plausibility, 
that the aristocracy were habitually the enemies and oppressors 
of the poor, and that nothing could effectually benefit the com- 
monwealth hut a total revolution in the state of society. 

In the year 687, C. Manilius, one of the tribunes,** proposed a 
renewal of one of the laws which had been passed Tribuneship of c. 
during the triumph of the popular party under Car- Maniiius. 
bo, and which had subsequently, we may suppose, been annulled 
by Sylla. By this law the freedmen had been enrolled promiscu- 
ously in all the tribes, instead of being confined, as before, to the 
four city tribes only. Manilius procured its revival, by proposing 
it suddenly at a late hour of the day, when the majority of re- 
spectable citizens had left the forum f^ but it was instantly an- 
nulled by the senate, as having been illegally passed, and Mani- 
lius himself was induced to abandon any further mention of it.*^ 
But finding that he was still threatened with the resentment of 
the aristocracy, he resolved to secure himself by courting more 

8« Quintilian, VIII. 3 « Dion Cassius, XXXVI. 20, edit. Le- 

*^ Quintilian, VI. 5 — " ut Cornelium unclav. 
ipso confessionis fiducia eripuerit." ^ Cicero, pro Comelio, I. Fragm. 

"* Asconius, in Ciceron. Orat. pro Mi- 
lone, 8 ; and Cicero, Orat pro Comelio, I. 



]72 FIRST CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE. 

assiduously the favour of the people, and by gaining the protec- 
tion of an individual, whose friends it might not be politic for the 
The Maniiian law. sonato to attack. This is said to have been the 
origin of the famous Maniiian law, by which it was proposed to 
commit the sole management of the war with Mithridates and 
Tigranes to Pompey, and to continue to him a large portion of 
the extraordinary powers with which he was already invested to 
act against the pirates. The aristocratical party, as may be sup- 
posed, warmly opposed the law, but it was supported by Caesar 
and by Cicero, aiid finally carried." It is probable that the mere 
military part of the command might have been safely intrusted to 
other hands ; but with the peculiar temptations which the East 
offered to plunder and extortion, no officer could have been so 
well chosen as Pompey to retrieve the lost character of Roman 
magistrates, to conciliate the affections of the people of the pro- 
vinces, and to administer his extensive command with justice, 
humanity, and wisdom. Nor would the measure, in strictness, 
have been dangerous, even as a precedent ; for as Pompey was 
appointed to wield such unusual powers, on account of his tried 
moderation and integrity, there was little probability that officers 
would often be found with similar qualities to entitle them to a 
similar honour. 

Towards the close of the year, P. Cornelius Sylla,®* a relation 
of the late dictator, and P. Autronius, were elected consuls for the 
year following ; but being shortly after accused of bribery, and 
being found guilty, the election was declared null and void, and 
L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus were chosen in their 
room. The famous L. Sergius Catilina had intended to offer 
himself as a candidate, but he was also at this time under accu- 
sation for misconduct in his late province of Africa,^ ^ and the 
senate resolved that under such circumstances he could not be 
First conspiracy of elccted. Irritated at his disappointment, he entered 

Catiline, Autronius, .. • •x1T-»a1 • jz-iit 

andPiso. mto a conspn-acy with P. Autronuis and Cn. Piso, 

a young man of noble birth, but needy and profligate : and it was 
resolved that the two consuls elect, Cotta and Manlius, should be 
murdered in the capitol on the first of January, when they would 
first enter upon their office ; that Catiline and Autronius should 
then seize upon the consulship, and Piso should be sent with an 
army to secure the important province of Spain. The design 
was suspected, and its execution was, therefore, postponed to the 
fifth of February, when it was intended to assassinate not the 
consuls only, but a great number of the senators when assembled 
in the senate-house. Catiline, however, gave the signal for the 
massacre before the armed men, whom they had hired to execute 

" Dion Cassius, XXXVI. 20. «' Q. Cicero, de Petitione Consulates, 

*" Sallust, Catilina, 18. Cicero, pro P. 3. Cicero, Fragm. Orationis in Toga Can- 
Sylia, 17. 32. dida. Sallust, Catilina, 18. 



SECOND CONSPIRACY OP CATILINE. I73 

it, were collected in sufficient force ; and after this second disap- 
pointment the attempt was rehnquished. But aUhough this con- 
spiracy is mentioned by Cicero and Salkist as a matter perfectly 
notorious, yet the authors of it were suffered to remain unquestioned, 
and Catiline ventured, two years afterwards, to offer himself again 
as a candidate for the highest office in the commonwealth. 

The year which had begun with such alarming circumstances 
was marked in its progress with little that is re- u.c. ess. 

markable. Catiline's trial for misconduct in his province came 
on, but he was acquitted : an escape which he is said to have 
owed to the corruption of his judges and of his accuser, P. Clo- 
dius,*" who suffered himself to be bribed by Catiline to weaken 
purposely the force of his own accusation. At this censorship of M.crai- 
lime also M. Crassus and d. Catulus were acting su3 a.,.i a. catuiua. 
as censors ; but they were warmly at variance with each other on 
an important question relating to the inhabitants of Cisalpine 
Gaul to the north of the Po.^' Crassus wished to extend the 
privileges of Roman citizenship to them as to all the other people 
within the Alps ; but Catulus, according to the usual policy of 
the aristocratical party, was adverse to the measure, and both 
persisting in their respective opinions, resigned the censorship. 
It was thought by many that the streets of Rome were thronged 
too much already, without swelling the number of The papiaa law. 
citizens still more ; and C. Papius,^^ one of the tribunes, proposed 
and carried a law, by which all foreigners were ordered to depart 
from Rome. This measure occasioned, probably, great incon- 
venience and distress to individuals, without any important bene- 
fits to the public peace. While the number of needy and profli- 
gate citizens was so great, and whilst such multitudes of slaves 
and gladiators were kept in the city, ready at all times to serve 
the purposes of riot and violence, it was of little avail to drive 
away the small proportion of free foreigners who might possibly 
have strengthened the cause of any sedition. 

In the year following, L. Julius Caesar and C, Marcius Figulus 
were chosen consuls. Catiline now was preparing Beginnings of the se- 
to renew his canvass for the consulship, and to catfiine""^^''*"^ "^ 
combine it with the plan of a second conspiracy. ^-^^ ^^^■ 
This man must not be classed among the ordinary leaders of the 
popular party who opposed the authority of the senate ; nor with 
such men as the Gracchi, who, although their meditated changes 
threatened to affect the tenure of property, yet proposed no more 
than that which an unrepealed law of the republic had already 
sanctioned, and who, with all their rashness and violence, would 
have shrunk from the thought of shedding the blood of the no- 

•" Cicero, de Haruspicum Responsis, 20. '^ Dion Cassius.XXX^II. 33. Cicero, 
Fragm. Orat. in Toga Candida. de Officiis, III. 11. 

»» Dion Cassius, XXX VII. 33. 



174 SECOND CONSPIRACY OP CATILINE. 

blest of their countrymen. But Catiline, from his early youth, 
had been stained with crimes : in the proscription of Sylla he had 
distinguished himself by peculiar cruelty and rapacity,'^ and since 
that period the free indulgence of his profligate desires had re- 
duced him to indigence, which he had again repaired by his 
extortions in his province, but which was returning upon him 
afresh from the usual tenour of his life in Rome. He was of a 
patrician family, and found many others amongst the nobility 
who resembled him in profligacy and neediness, and who were 
willing to share with him all his projects of revolution :" to these 
were added a multitude of worthless and desperate men from the 
lower classes of society. Whoever disliked a life of labour, who- 
ever wished to be relieved from the restraints of law, whoever were 
involved in debts which they could only hope to wipe ofi" by the 
murder of their creditors ; the envious, the rapacious, and the re- 
vengeful, who form so large a portion of mankind, all were ready 
to embrace a scheme which promised them plunder, and license, 
and bloodshed. Political circumstances added others to the num- 
ber of the conspirators. The inhabitants of Tuscany, ^^ who had 
been deprived of their lands by Sylla's confiscations, were eager 
to recover their property ; many of the soldiers who had received 
these lands as settlements had since become involved by their ex- 
travagance or ignorance of farming, and were anxious for a sec- 
ond civil war that they might receive fresh rewards ; whilst the 
children of those who had been proscribed, being excluded by 
Sylla's laws from all the honours of the commonwealth during 
their lives, were anxious to raise themselves from this state of 
degradation. It is mentioned, too, that a great many women of 
birth and talents,'^ but of infamous character, who, in the decay 
of their youthful beauty had no longer the means of indulging 
their extravagant habits, and had thus contracted considerable 
debts, were ready to use all their arts and influence in support of 
the conspiracy, and to assist it more directly by the use of poison 
or the dagger against their own husbands, whose rank or char- 
acter might render them valuable friends to the constitution of 
their country.. 

The chief grievance on which Catiline dwelt when endeavour- 
ing to excite his associates to overthrow the existing government, 
was the monopoly of honours and riches amongst a few great 
families,^'' by which the bulk of the people were kept in a de- 
graded and impoverished condition. This complaint was utterly 
groundless in his own mouth, or in the mouths of all the patri- 
cian conspirators of his party ; they certainly were not excluded 
by any aristocratical jealousy from office ; nor is it possible to 

" Q. Cicero, de Petitione Consulat. »* Sallust, Catilina, 28. 

2, 3. »' Sallust, Caiilina, 24. 

»* Sallust, Catilina, 17. »7 Sallust, Catilina, 20. 



ELECTION OF CICERO TO THE CONSULSHIP. 175 

trace, in the lists of consuls and praetors about this period, any 
signs of a predominant influence exercised either by a few indi- 
viduals, or by a few paiticular families of the aristocracy. But 
it is true that the nobility, as a body, were unwilhng to see the 
highest posts in the commonwealth occupied by men of inferior 
birth and fortune, and wished to make the constitution too nearly 
resemble an oligarchy. The same C. Piso, who was consul when 
C. Cornelius was tribune, and who had been so strongly opposed 
to him, is said to have declared to the assembled people,^^ when, 
in his quality of consul, he was presiding at the election of consuls 
for the ensuing year, that if M. Palicanus, a man of humble origin 
and a popular tribune, should be chosen by the votes of the comi^ 
tia, he never would return him as duly elected. This no doubt 
was an extreme case ; yet the lists of consuls sufficiently prove 
that no one could easily attain that dignity, unless he were of 
noble blood and distinguished connexions ; and at the time of 
Catiline's conspiracy, Cicero's pretensions to the consulship, for 
which he was now a candidate, were much discouraged by the 
high aristocratical party." His character, however. Election of m. cicero 
was so pure, his eloquence so popular, and his po- ^"^^^ consulship. 
litical principles so much inclined to support the senate, that these 
merits atoned for his want of family ; and as Catiline's projects 
excited considerable alarm, the nobility perceived the necessity of 
having a consul able and willing to check them, and thus M. 
Cicero and C. Antonius were elected to fill the consulship for the 
following year. 

Thus disappointed in his hopes of obtaining a place of lawful 
power, Catiline turned more zealously to his schemes of revolu- 
tion ; and whilst he was increasing the number of his partisans 
at Rome, he provided depots of arms in difterent parts of Italy, and 
having found means to borrow money on his own credit and 
that of his friends, he transmitted it to Fsesulse in Tuscany, to 
the care of one C. Manlius, who was to commence the intended 
insurrection in the country. At the same time he contrived re- 
peated attempts against the life of Cicero ; and in the midst of 
these designs he actually proposed to offer himself once more, at 
the ensuing elections, as a candidate for the consulship. His 
plans, however, had been constantly communicated to different 
persons, and from a very early period of the conspiracy had been 
denounced to the consul Cicero. One of his asso- The designs of catiiine 
ciates, d. Curius,'"" had long been engaged in a cTiusto'cfcero.''^ ^' 
criminal connexion with a woman of the name of Fulvia, who 
resembled, in the general profligacy and extravagance of her 
manner of living, those females whom we have already mentioned 

»» Valerius Maximus, III. 8. "<> Sallust, Catilina, 23. 

»» Sallust, Catilina, 23. 



176 THE AGRARIAN LAW OP P. RULLUS. 

among the accomplices of Catiline ; but who, from some feelings 
of humanity or private connexions, or some regard for the consti- 
tution of her country, was a stranger to all the plans of the con- 
spirators, Curius was a man of good family, but indigent ; and 
having no means left of gratifying Fulvia's habits of expense, he 
found himself a less welcome visiter to her. But so soon as he 
had become acquainted with the views of Catiline, and had heard 
the splendid allurements which he held out to his partisans, he 
endeavoured to regain her favour by assuring her that in a short 
time he should be enabled to testify, in the amplest manner, the 
affection which he bore her. Some doubts expressed by Fuivia 
as to his sincerity, led him in his own defence to disclose the 
means to which he was looking for his enrichment ; and Fuivia, 
struck with horror at this communication, lost no time in making 
several persons acquainted with it. Afterwards, when Cicero be- 
came consul, he gained her over entirely to the interests of the 
commonwealth, and empowered her to make Curius such pro- 
mises as tempted him to give regular information of all that passed 
at every meeting of the conspirators. Through this channel he 
also gained timely notice of the designs formed against his own 
life ; and took care to keep a strong body of his friends and de- 
pendents near his person, that they might defend him either from 
assassination or from open violence. 

Such, however, were the imperfections of the Roman laws, 
Events of the early that, with tlic fullcst kuowledsie of the existence 

part of Cicero's con- j .. c j. ^ 1,1 

euiship. and constant progress oi a treasonable conspu'acy, 

the consul was obliged to wait for some overt act of rebellion 
before he could venture to act officially against the guilty. In 
the mean time the people in general were ignorant of the dangers 
which threatened the state : and whilst Catiline was carrying on 
his projects of revoUition in secret, several other matters of far less 
importance successively engaged the attention of the public. P. 
Servilius Iluhus, one of the tribunes,"" proposed to gratify the 
Theaerarianiawof lowcr ordcrs by a ucw agrarian law, framed on a 
p.RuUus. scale far more extensive than any that had preceded 

it, and conferring powers uiuisually great on the commissioners 
by whom it was to be carried into effect. The general object of 
the law was to provide the poorer citizens with settlements of 
land in Italy ; and for this purpose a commission of ten persons 
was to be appointed, who should be enabled to sell national pro- 
perty of every description in every part of the empire, and, with 
the money arising from the sale, should purchase lands in Italy, 
and settle upon them colonies of Roman citizens. With some- 
thing more than the usual arbitrary jurisdiction intrusted to com- 
missions of this nature, the commissioners were constituted sole 

'" Cicero, Orationes de Lege Agraria. 



THE AGRARIAN LAW OP P. RULLUS. 177 

judges of what was national property, and were authorized to fix 
the place of sale wherever they should think proper, a door being 
thus opened on the one hand lo the greatest oppression, and on 
the other to the most shameful corruption. The commission, 
moreover, was to exist for five years, and during its existence 
none of its members could be subjected to trial for misconduct;'"^ 
and two hundred of the equestrian order were to be chosen yearly 
as a sort of guard of honour, that the commissioners might travel 
every where with kingly state, and with more than kingly power ; 
for it seems they were empowered every where to enforce their 
authority by punishments inflicted at their own discretion, while 
there was no other power which could protect from their jurisdic- 
tion, or reverse their sentences. It was pioposed further that 
these sovereign magistrates should be chosen by a majority out of 
seventeen tribes only :'"^ that the tribes who were to elect should 
be chosen by lot, and the comitia should be held by the framer of 
the law, that is, by Rullus himself; so that, according to the well- 
known influence exercised over the result of an election at Rome 
by the officer who presided at it and received the votes, Rullus 
might calculate fairly on being placed himself on the commission. 
This agrarian law is not the only instance in history in which a 
popular party has incurred general odium by attempting, under 
the colour of an extraordinary commission, to confer immoderate 
powers upon its own leaders. Cicero instantly perceived the 
advantage which was afforded him ; and whilst he professed to 
approve the principle of agrarian laws, he attacked this particular 
measure as a mere device to invest ten persons with absolute 
sovereignty over the whole empire ; and as Rullus had not ac- 
quired such an ascendency over the people as to make them deaf 
to all insinuations against the purity of his views, the eloquence 
of Cicero was listened to with delight ; one of the other tribunes 
promised to negative the law'" if it should be submitted to the 
votes of the people ; and Rullus, thus finding the popular feeling 
turned against him, abandoned his measure without further trial. 
The aristocratical party were contented with having exposed 
the folly of their adversaries' scheme, and with having completely 
defeated their attempt. It is ever the case in party warfare that 
the public good is sacrificed, while the contending factions appeal 
almost exclusively to the most contemptible of all arguments, those 
which derive their force from the weakness or contradictions of 
an opponent. The proposed law of Rullus was extravagant and 
absurd ; but was there no other practicable plan for the relief of 
the poor, which Cicero, the professed friend of the principle of 
agrarian laws, might have most seasonably devised, to remove 

'"' Cicero, Orationes de Lege Agraria, '"^ Cicero, de Lege AgrariA, IL 7, 8. 
IL 12, 13. "* Cicero, pro Sulla, 23. 



178 REPEAL OP THE LAW OP SYLLA PROPOSED. 

some portion of the really existing sufferings of the lower orders, 
and to conciliate their affections to the nobility at a period so 
fraught with danger to the commonwealth? When the tempta- 
tions of the capital, and the distressed state of the country had 
drawn to Rome so large a portion of the free population of Italy ; 
when Samnium and some of the neighbouring districts were 
almost a wilderness, and Etruria was overrun with banditti ; above 
all, when a conspiracy was known to exist which struck at the 
very foundation of the present order of things, sound policy surely 
demanded that the chief magistrates of the state should them- 
selves propose some expedient, which, by relieving the indigent, 
and restoring Italy in general to a more healthful condition, might 
deprive the enemies of society of their principal resources. A se- 
vere but necessary tax, levied upon all establishments of slaves 
above a certain number, might have gradually resupplied the 
country with a population of free labourers ; or, as the agrarian 
laws were the ordinary method of providing for the poor at Rome, 
the product of such a tax might have been employed in the pur- 
chase or rent of lands to be distributed among the poorer citizens ; 
and such a step, abhorrent as it may be to our notions, might per- 
haps have alleviated the public distresses, and certainly would 
have enabled the nobihty to resist the attacks of seditious adven- 
turers with a greater consciousness of innocence, and a better 
claim to the support of the people at large. 

After the defeat of the proposed agrarian law, an attempt was 
Proposal for thn re- made by somo of the popular party to procure the 
syUa°respectinrthe rcstoratlou of the childrcn of those whom Sylla 
scribed"" ''"^p™" had proscribd to the common rights and dignities 
of citizens, by rendering them eligible to public offices. On this 
occasion Cicero again displayed his eloquence with success in op- 
posing the law. He alleged that the existing order of things was 
so much built upon the laws of Sylla, '"^ that the sons of those 
who had suffered under his government could not, without dan- 
ger, be relieved from the disabilities under which they laboured. 
Of the justice of this argument we have no adequate means of 
judging ; it admitted, at least, that the exclusion of so many in- 
nocent individuals was an evil ; but whether their influence, 
could they have exerted it, would have tended to reform or to 
revolutionize the actual order of things, we cannot easily deter- 
mine. From the general profligacy of the times, however, we 
may conjecture that a depressed party, invested suddenly with 
power, was not likely to exercise it with moderation, or with any 
regard to the public welfare. 

The next proceeding of the popular party was more clearly 

'« Quinctilian, XL 1,§85. 



TRIAL OP C. RABIRIUS. ^IQ 

deserving of censure. It has been already noticed, 
that C. Caesar had, on one or two occasions, ex- ^riai of c. Rabwus. 
pressed with some ostentation his affection for the party of Marius, 
and he now attempted to vindicate the memory of L. Saturninus, 
who, having been for a long time the associate of Marius, was af- 
terwards opposed by him as the rehictant instrument of the senate, 
and having been taken in actual rebellion, had been murdered by 
the armed citizens, who broke into his place of confinement. 
CsBsar,'"^ it is said, instigated T. Altius Labienus, at this time one 
of the tribunes, and afterwards distinguished in Gaul as one of 
Cassar's lieutenants, and in the civil war as a partisan of Pompey, to 
accuse C. Rabirius, an aged senator, as the perpetrator of this mur- 
der. The cause was first tried before L. Csesar and C. Caesar,'" 
who were appointed by lot to act as special commissioners in this 
case, by virtue of the praetor's order ; and the* accused was ar- 
raigned according to the old law of murder, by which, if he had 
been found guilty, he would have been condemned to be hanged. 
But this mode of proceeding was stopped by Rabirius appealing 
to the people, or by the interference of Cicero as consul,'"^ as his 
speech seems to imply, and his procuring the removal of the cause 
before another tribunal. The people, however, it is said, were 
likely to condemn the accused, when Q,. Metellus Celer,'"' one of 
the praetors, obliged the meeting to break up by tearing down the 
ensign, which was always flying on the Janiculum whilst the 
people were assembled, and without which, according to ancient 
custom, they could not lawfully continue their deliberations. In 
this manner Rabirius escaped, for Labienus or his instigators did 
not think proper to bring forward the business again, whether 
despairing of again finding the people equally disposed to con- 
demn the accused, or whether the progress of the conspiracy of 
Catiline began now to turn men's attention more entirely to a dif- 
ferent subject. 

The comitia for the election of consuls were on the point of 
being held, when Cicero acquainted the senate with some of the 
facts of which he was in possession relative to the conspiracy, and 
persuaded them to order the postponement of the elections, that 
the state of affairs might previously undergo a full discussion.''" 
On the following day, when the senators were assembled, Cicero 
taxed Catiline openly with the criminal designs imputed to him, 
and called on. him to justify himself. But when he had said in 
reply, that there were two parties in the commonwealth, the one 
weak both in its head and its body, the other strong in body but 
headless, and that he was resolved to supply it with a head, the 
senate expressed their indignation by a general murmur, and the 

»»« Suetonius, in Csesare, 12. ^°^ Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 42. 

'"T Dion Cassius, XXXVtI. 42. "« Cicero, pro L. Murana, 25. 

*"' Cicero, pro Rabirio, 4, 5. 



lyO CATILINE'S^ AGENTS TAKE UP ARMS IN ETRURIA. 

decree, usual in all dangerous emergencies,'" was passed, " That 
the consuls should provide for the safety of the republic." Cicero, 
however, did not avail himself as yet of the ample powers thus 
committed to him ; he contented himself with defending his own 
person on the day of the election, by going down to the Campus 
Martins attended by a strong escort,'"^ and having seen Catiline 
once more rejected, and D. Junius Silanus and L. Mursena chosen 
consuls, he continued to learn all Catiline's plans from the infor- 
mation of Cnrius, and to take the proper precautions to obviate 
every attempt that might be made of a nature directly hostile. 

In the mean time, C. Manlius, according to the instructions of 
The a-ents of cati- CatiUno, had taken up arms in Etruria,"^ and two 
Ei'tmria.'^"''^""^'" others of the conspirators had been despatched to 
excite insurrections in Picetuim and Apulia. To oppose these 
movements, two of the pr6etors and two proconsuls, who had late- 
ly returned from their provinces, and who, having claimed the hon- 
our of a triumph, were both waiting, with their armies not yet dis- 
banded, in the neighbourhood of Rome, were sent into the differ- 
ent quarters where the danger was most threatening, while guards 
were stationed in different parts of Rome itself, and the public mind 
was studiously alarmed with reports of the atrocious designs of the 
conspirators. Catiline finding himself the object of universal sus- 
picion, offered successively to commit himself to the custody of sev- 
eral individuals of distiliction, and amongst others even to that of 
the consul;"* but no one would undertake such a charge, Cicero 
being anxious to oblige him to leave Rome, and the others being 
probably unwilling to incur so great a responsibility, and supposing, 
perhaps, that Catiline's accomplices in the city were numerous 
enough to effect his rescue, and that they who held him in custo- 
dy would be the first marked out for destruction. It appears that 
Cicero having full information of the extent of the conspiracy, and 
knowing that there were many persons engaged in it whom he 
could not venture to punish without driving them first into some 
act of open treason, was desirous that it should not merely be 
checked for a time, and allowed again to prosecute its plans in 
secret, so as to keep the country in perpetual alarm, but that it 
should be brought at once to its execution ; for he trusted to the 
precautions which he had taken to insure the commonwealth 
from any danger which the explosion might occasion ; and after 
it had taken place he knew that the consular authority might be 
freely used to deliver society effectually from those who had so 
long been plotting against it. 

The measures of Catiline were greatly embarrassed by this 
policy ; his accomplices in Rome were restrained and awed by the 

"' Cicero, in Catiiinam, I. 2. "'' Sallust, Catilina,27. 30. 

"* Cicero, pro MurcenS, 26. "* Cicero, in Catiiinam, I. 8. 



CICERO DEJYOUNCES CATILINE IN THE SENATE. 13^ 

vigilance of the government, and could not be roused to action ; so 
that he resolved to put himself at the head of the forces already in 
arms in Etruria, and try his fortune in the field. He called together 
hi§ principal associates, '"^ late at night, at the house of M. Porcius 
Lseca : he complained of their inactivity ; proposed to them in 
greaterdetail his plans for the general insurrection in the country, 
and declared his own intention of joining the army of C. Manlius 
without delay, if Cicero could by any means be removed before 
his departure. Upon this two Roman knights, "^ C. Cornelius and 
L. Vargunteius, engaged to go early the next morning to the con- 
sul's house, to procure an interview with him, and to assassinate 
him in his own chamber. But Curius did not fail to give informa- 
tion as usual of what had been undertaken ; and when the intended 
assassins arrived at Cicero's doors they were refused admittance. 
Notwithstanding this disappointment, there were other parts of the 
conspirators' plans which might be avoided with greater difficulty, 
and Cicero assembled the senate on the following cicero denounces ca- 
day, the eighth of November, in the Temple of Jupi- anTforceVhlm^to 
ter Stator, on the ascent of the Palatine hill, a place hi^Trmy"^ E^tmrii"'" 
of unusual security from its situation and the nature of its build- 
ings. It was on this occasion that Catiline ventured to appear in 
the senate to defend himself against the imputations under which 
he laboured, and was attacked by Cicero in a vehement invective, 
in which he was told instantly to leave Rome, where all his trea- 
sons were now fully known, and would be no longer tolerated. 
His attempted excuses were drowned by a general cry of indigna- 
tion ; he at once left the senate, and on ihe very same night 
quitted the city,'"' and hastened to join his associate Manlius in 
Tuscany. But on his way thither he wrote letters to several 
persons of high rank at Rome, still asserting his innocence, and 
saying that, oppressed as he was by the violence of his enemies, 
he was going to retire to Marseilles, and there live in banishment, 
rather than involve his country, on his account, in civil disorders. 
In the want of those regular channels of information by which 
events are so speedily and so surely known in our days from one 
end of a country to the other, this statement might continue to be 
believed by a large portion of the people, long after Catiline was 
really at the head of an insurgent army, and might furnish his 
partisans with grounds for attacking the administration of Cicero, 
and possibly might establish a common point on which the leaders 
of the regular popular party would not refuse to co-operate with 
them. 

After leaving Rome, he waited for a short time in the neigh- 
bourhood of Arretium,"^ in order to organize the insurrection in 

"5 Cicero, in Catilinam, I. 4. Sallust, "'' Cicero, II. 1. Sallust, Catilina, 32. 
Catilina, 27. "« Sallust, Catilina, 36. 44. 56. 

''® Cicero, in Catilinam, I. 4. 



182 ANTONIUS MARCHES AGAINST THE CONSPIRATORS, 

that quarter, and then proceeded to the camp of Manhus near 
Fsesulse, attended by his Hctors, as if he were a lawful magistrate 
of the commonwealth. The better to maintain this character, he 
would not receive any of the slaves who offered to enlist in his 
army ; although his agents in Apulia and Picenum were at tfiis 
very time endeavouring to rekindle the war of Spartacus, by ex- 
citing the slaves every where to assert their freedom and rise in 
arms. But still his forces were so considerable, that the senate, 
after declaring him and Manlius public enemies, directed the con- 
suls to levy soldiers, and, intrusting Cicero with the care of the 
city, commissioned his colleague, C. Antonius, to oppose Catiline 
Antonius is ordered iu the field. Thc sltuatiou of Antonius on this oc- 
^^^r'ktoT'"^" ^ casion, greatly resembled that of Marius, when he 
was ordered by the senate to act against his old associate, L. Sa- 
turninus. We have already mentioned that Antonius had been 
accused and condemned, some years before, for corruption and 
oppression in Greece, and that he had been expelled from the 
senate by the censors, L. Gellius and Cn. Lentulus, in the year of 
Rome 683. From that time the profligacy of his life had connect- 
ed him with Catiline, and other persons of similar character ; and 
in the elections of the preceding year, Catiline had coalesced with 
him against the pretensions of Cicero ; and his success was re- 
garded by Catiline as a most favourable circumstance, even in 
the midst of his own disappointment."^ Worthless as Antonius 
personally was, it was of importance to conciliate him to the cause 
of the existing constitution, whilst he held the office of consul; 
lest, if he openly quarrelled with his colleague, he might lend the 
sanction of the consular name, as Cinna had done before him, to 
the projects of the enemies of the government. Cicero, therefore, 
when the consuls, as usual, were to receive by lot the care of some 
province for the year following their consulship, gave up to An- 
tonius the government of Macedonia,'^" which had fallen to him, 
and was contented to receive in exchange the less desirable pro- 
vince of Gaul ; and by this attention, and by avoiding every thing 
that could give him offence, he induced Antonius to rest contented 
with the existing state of affairs, and kept him so distant from 
the conspiracy, that he could with the less scruple obey the senate 
in acting against it. -The departure of Catiline had still left, how- 
ever, a dangerous band of conspirators within the walls of Rome,'^' 
who were, agreeably to his instructions, to set fire to the city in 
several places on a particular day, and to murder the principal 
magistrates and supporters of the government during the confu- 
sion ; while Catiline was to be ready with his army, in the neigh- 

"9 Sallust, Catilina, 21. 2G. Asconii "<> Cicero, in L. Pisonem, 2. Plutarch, 
Argumentum in Ciceron. Oral. Fragm. in Cicerone, 12. 
in Toga Candida. "' Sallust, Catilina, 39. 43. 



ATTEMPT TO CORRUPT THE ALLOBROGES AMBASSADORS. 133 

bourhood, to cut off all who should escape the massacre and attempt 
to fly from Rome, and thus should put the finishing stroke to the 
revolution. Of the conspirators left behind in the capital, the 
principal were P. Lentulus Sura, who had been consul in the year 
682, and had been expelled from the senate, like C. Antonius, by 
the censors, in the year following, C. Cethegus, a man also of noble 
family, but of infamous life, L. Cassius Longinus, P. Autronius, 
L. Statilius, and P. Gabinius. Many other persons were connect- 
ed with these : and it is said that a very large proportion of the 
young nobility favoured their views, and were ready to assist them 
by murdering their own parents, when the time fixed for the mas- 
sacre should arrive. In the meantime, attempts were made to 
throw upon Cicero the odium of the war which had just broken 
out ; and the signal for the execution of the plot was to be given 
by one of their party, L. Bestia, who was then tribune of the people, 
and who was to inveigh against the tyranny of the consul in a 
speech to be delivered in the forum. But the whole Attemp' to corrupt 

,•1 ^ 1J.1J- J • the ambassadors of 

conspu'acy was timely and completely discovered m the AUobroges. 
a very remarkable manner. There happened to be at Rome some 
deputies from the AUobroges, a people of Transalpine Gaul, '22 
who had been some years before added to the Roman dominions, 
and who had suffered as usual from the oppression of the pro- 
vincial magistrates. About six or seven years before this period, 
they had especially complained of the exactions of Marius Fonte- 
ius, and he had been brought to trial on their accusation ; and 
although he was warmly defended by Cicero, yet it was admitted 
that his government had been rigid, and that the AUobroges were 
now in a state of great distress, and had incurred a heavy public 
debt.. Their deputies were sent to Rome, in the hopes of obtain- 
ing some relief from the senate ; but finding that they had little 
to expect from this body, they were, after a time, reduced to des- 
pair, when one of the conspirators, who had formerly traded in 
Gaul, and was personally known to most of the chiefs of the coun- 
try, addressed them in the forum, and, learning the hopeless state 
of their affairs, proposed to them, by degrees, that they should join 
in the conspiracy, telling them its views, and the names of some 
of the principal members, and promising, if they could excite their 
countrymen to take up arms against the republic, that they should 
be perfectly freed from all their difficulties. The offer was tempt- 
ing ; but, on the other hand, the knowledge of so important a se- 
cret might enable them to purchase, without any hazard, an ample 
reward from the government ; and they accordingly disclosed the 
whole transaction to d. Fabius Sanga, to whom their countrymen 
usually applied to further their interests when they had any bu- 
siness at Rome, and who lost no time in laying the information 

"2 Cicero, in Catilinam, III. 2. Sallust,40. 

13 



184 POPULAR FEELING ON DISCOVERY OF THE PLOT. 

before Cicero. The consul directed the AUobroges to keep up 
their correspondence with the conspirators, and to feign compli- 
ance with their wishes, that they might be able, at the proper time, 
to furnish him with some written proofs of the reality of the plot ; 
for which purpose, they were instructed to demand that the terms 
of their agreement should be given them in writing, with the 
signatures of the principal conspirators, in order that their coun- 
trymen in Gaul might know on whom they were to depend. Not 
only was this request complied with, but the deputies were further 
desired by Lentulus to visit the camp of Catiline on their way 
home, and there to confirm with him the alliance which they had 
contracted with his associates ; and T. Volturtius, a citizen of 
Croton, who was to accompany them, was charged by Lentulus 
with a letter, without any signature, which he was to deliver to 
Catiline. All these things being duly reported to Cicero, he order- 
ed two of the praetors to keep guard on the opposite sides of the 
Milvian bridge on the night fixed for the departure of the depu- 
Arrest of the ambas- tics.'^^ Thc train of tlic Allobrogcs, accompanied 
conspiratorl ^"^ '^ by Volturtius, arrived at the bridge about two or 
three hours after midnight, on the morning of the third of Decem- 
ber : they were instantly stopped by the guards, and, on the ap- 
pearance of the praetors, surrendered themselves ; all their papers 
were secured, and themselves, together with Volturtius, were 
taken to Cicero's house a little before sunrise. Messages were 
immediately despatched to Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, and Ga- 
binius, to require their attendance ; and they all without any 
suspicion obeyed the sunmions. The senate was ordered to meet 
in the temple of Concord ; and there Volturtius, the AUobroges, 
and the arrested conspirators were successively brought forward. 
The first was encouraged to declare freely all that he knew ; and 
upon his direct evidence, together Avith that of the AUobroges, 
confirmed by their own seals and handwriting, the conspirators 
either confessed their crmie, or did not any longer venture to deny 
it. They were then committed to custody, Lentulus having first 
resigned the office of praetor with which he was invested. 

Scarcely was the meeting of the senate dissolved, when Cicero 
assembled the people in the forum, and there related to them, in 
detail, the objects of the conspiracy, and the manner in which it had 
Feeling of the popu- becu fully detcctcd. With whatever disappointment 
ofThe"piot. '^""'•'^ the mere profligate rabble might have heard this 
statement, yet the majority of the people, even of those who on 
ordinary occasions opposed the aristocratical interest, regarded the 
wickedness of the plot with horror, and felt thankful to Cicero, 
whose ability had discovered and destroyed it. Every one was 
incensed at the project of setting fire to the city,"^^ which would 

"" Cicero, in Catilinam, IIL 2. »" Sallust, CatiUna, 48. 



PUNISHMENT OF THE CONSPIRATORS DEBATED. 155 

have been as ruinous to the poor as to the rich ; and, for a mo- 
ment, all, but the most unprincipled of the community, sympa- 
thized with each other in the preservation of the commonwealth. 
A shght attempt was made by some of the dependents of Lentu- 
his to effect his rescue, and to call on the slaves to join them, and 
to hire the most notorious leaders of the lower people to excite a 
disturbance amongst them. But Cicero's vigilance bafflled these 
designs ; and the fate of the conspirators depended on the deci- 
sion of the senate, which assembled on the fifth of December, to 
determine on their punishment. 

D. Junius Silanus, who was at this time consul elect, gave it 
as his opinion that the conspirators should be put Debate on the punish- 
to death ; but C. Caesar, not pretending to extenuate tors" ° 
their guilt, but insisting only that death was by the constitution 
of Rome an illegal punishment, proposed that their property 
should be confiscated, and that they should be condemned to per- 
petual imprisonment in some of the free towns of Italy. His speech 
is said to have produced a considerable impression ; but Q,. Catulus, 
L. Lucullus, C. Piso, and Cicero himself, '^^ ^vith most of the sena- 
tors of consular dignity, still supported the opinion of Silanus. It 
was reserved, however, for M. Porcius Cato to move the resolution 
which was finally carried ; and in which he combined the high- 
est panegyrics on the conduct of the consul, with a vote that the 
conspirators should be put to death, according to the ancient cus- 
toms of the republic, as having been guilty of manifest treason. 
In compliance with this decree of the senate, Cicero ordered Len- 
tulus and his accomplices to be carried, on the very same evening, 
to a secret under-ground cell in the public prison, where they were 
successively strangled. 

On no occasion were the faults of the Roman constitution 
more mischievously displayed than in these pro- Reflections on their 
ceedings. So ill framed were the laws, that the execution. 
worst criminals could not legally receive that punishment which 
our natural sense of justice, no less than the maxims of state 
policy, declares to be the only adequate chastisement of the worst 
kinds of wickedness. Thus, although justice and the public 
safety alike demanded the execution of the conspirators, yet these 
claims could only be satisfied by an assumption on the part of the 
senate of a power to dispense with the laws, and by another ap- 
peal to abstract principles in order to justify a departure from the 
ordinances of the existing constitution. The advantage thus of- 
fered to a popular leader was not lost upon Csesar : he had now 
obtained a point on which the sincere but ill-judging friends of 
liberty might be induced to sympathize with the vilest supporters 
of sedition, and which might effectually terminate that short-lived 

*^* Cicero, ad Atticum Epistolar. XII. epist. XXI. 



IQQ REFLECTIONS ON THEIR EXECUTION. 

harmony between honest men of all parties, which had been pro- 
duced by the first discovery of the conspiracy. It mattered no- 
thing that no traces of a sanguinary or tyrannical spirit were to be 
found in Cicero's proceedings ; that after the execution of five 
persons, all guilty of the most heinous crime on the clearest evi- 
dence, the justice of the government was satisfied ; and that its 
triumph was not stained, as in the case of the Gracchi, by any after 
acts of unwarrantable and disgraceful cruelty. Caesar's ambition 
required that he should excite the resentment of the people against 
the senate ; and here, as on every other occasion, he sacrificed to 
it the welfare of his country. 

The fate of Catihne himself '^^ soon followed the punishment 
of his associates.'^'' His force had at one period amounted nearly 
to twelve thousand m||i, but of these not more than a fourth part 
were regularly armed, so that he did not choose to venture a bat- 
tle ; but having occupied the line of the Apennines, he manoeu- 
vred his troops with considerable ability, sometimes threatening 
to march towards Rome, and at other times to retreat into Gaul, 
and never allowing the enemy to bring him to action. But the 
news of the detection of his accomplices in the city soon caused a 
considerable desertion amongst his followers, and despairing of 
success from anj'' oflensive operations, he fell back upon the 
neighbourhood of Pistorium by forced marches, through moun- 

"^ Sallust, Catilina, 56, et seq. their designs by fire and assassination, 
'^' The conspiracy of Catiline, as de- rather than by open force. But if Catiline 
scribed by Sallust and Cicero, is consider- could have once made himself master of 
ed by some persons to contain many im- the city, no one can doubt but that he 
probabilities. It is incredible, say they, would have found a majority in the co- 
that a man like Catiline, unconnected with mitia ready, either from fear or sympathy 
the regular popular party, should have se- in his projects, to elect him consul or dic- 
riously hoped to effect a revolution ; nor tator ; and when thus invested with the 
can it be believed that any of the nobility title of a legal magistrate, and in posses- 
should have submitted themselves to the sion of the seat of government, he would 
guidance of such a leader. Even if he probably have persuaded a very great part 
had succeeded in setting fire to the city of the community to remain neutral, while 
and destroying the principal senators, the his own active supporters, the profligate 
praetor of the nearest province would pre- young nobility, the needy plebeians, the 
sently have marched against him, and discontented Italian allies, and the restless 
would have crushed him with little difficul- veterans of Syila's armies, would have 
ty. But they who argue thus, forget that enabled him to defy the efforts of any 
Cataline was a patrician of noble family ; neighbouring praetor who might have been 
that he had been praetor ; and that he was disposed to attack him. He might have 
considered by Cicero as his most dangerous held the government as easily as Cinna 
competitor for the consulship, when he was and Carbo had done ; and although Pom- 
a candidate for that office. He had been pey mi^ht have imitated successfully the 
known in Sylia's proscriptions as a man conduct of Sylla, in returning from Asia 
who scrupled at nothing ; and there was to revenge the cause of the aristocracy, 
a large party in Rome to whom such a yet the chance of resisting him was not so 
character was the greatest recommcnda- hopeless as to dismay a set of desperate 
lion, and who would gladly follow any one conspirators, who, in their calculations, 
who possessed it. That this party was in- would have been well contented if the 
considerable in point of political power is probability of their failure was only a lit- 
true ; and they accordingly hoped to effect tie greater than that of their success. 



C^SAR PR^TOR, CATO TRIBUNE. 187 

tain roads, hoping that thence he might effect his escape into 
Gaul without being discovered. But finding that his retreat 
was cut off by the army of the prsetor, Q,. Metellus Ceier, who 
suspecting his designs had hastened to place himself on his pro- 
posed line of march, Catiline altered his plans, and prepared to 
fight with the consul 0, Antonius, who, with a considerable force, 
had been following him during his retreat. It happened that An- 
tonius either was, or pretended to be, indisposed, so that the com- 
mand devolved on M. Petreius his lieutenant, an experienced 
soldier, assisted by P. Sextius,'^^ one of the quasstors, who was 
warmly attached to Cicero, and was heartily desirous of destroy- 
ing the remains of the conspiracy. Accordingly the army of the 
republic did its duty, and the rebels, after a despe- Defeat and death of 
rate resistance, were totally defeated. C. Manlius, catuine. 
Catiline's lieutenant, was killed before the battle was decided, and 
Catiline himself, when he saw that the rout of his followers was 
complete, is said to have rushed into the ranks of the enemy, and 
there to have been slain. Nothing has been recorded of him to 
lessen the abhorrence which the general wickedness of his life, 
and the peculiar atrocity of his designs against his country, have 
justly deserved, and have ever abundantly met with. 
V From this time forwards the correspondence of Cicero with his 
different friends, furnishes us with so many mate- casar pr»tor, cato 
rials for our history, that it becomes necessary, un- theeariyWeoicktof 
less we would greatly exceed our limits, to notice "• '^- ^^i- 
only such as are of the greatest importance. When C. Caesar 
endeavoured to save the accomplices of Catiline from their de- 
served fate, he was already prsetor elect for the following year ; 
and M. Cato, who so successfully opposed him, was in like man- 
ner about to enter on the office of tribune of the people. Of the 
family and early life of the former we have already spoken ; and 
as we have now mentioned the name of his great opponent, we may 
take this opportunity of giving a slight sketch of his extraction also, 
and of the beginnings of his public career. M. Porcius Cato was 
the great grandson of Cato the censor, and the son of M. Cato and 
Livia, the sister of M. Livius Drusus, and the divorced wife of Q. 
Servilius Csepio, who perished in the war with the Italian allies. 
His father died when he was a child, and he was brought up in 
the house of his uncle M. Drusus,'^' where he is said to have 
given very early proofs of that resolute and even stubborn char- 
acter which marked him through life. After the assassination of 
Drusus, he appears to have passed his time under the care of a 
tutor named Sarpedon ; and his half brother Q,. Caepio, after hav- 
ing lost his father, seems to have been placed in the same hands. 
The lively affection which Cato entertained for his brother was a 

'^* Cicero, pro Sextio, 5. ^^' Plutarch, in Catone, 1, &c. 



188 ACCOUNT OP THE EARLY LIFE OP CATO. 

Striking contrast to the general coldness of his nature, and even 
after his constitutional apathy had been confirmed by the precepts 
of the Stoic philosophy, he gave vent to the most violent expres- 
sions of grief at the death of Csepio, and celebrated his funeral 
with a sumptuousness which was most opposite to his usual 
habits. But with this single sacrifice to the common feelings of 
humanity, he was in other respects, even in his early youth, so 
stern and reserved, that he is said rarely to have been seen to 
laugh, and so determined not to follow the vicious or absurd 
fashions of his age, that he ran into the opposite extreme of an 
indecent singularity, choosing in his dress the colour that was 
most unusual, and walking about with his personal appearance 
so neglected as to be utterly unworthy of his rank in the com- 
monwealth.'^" Yet he was not without feelings of anger, which 
he displayed towards Gl. Cascilius Metellus Scipio,'^' who had 
married the lady to whom he himself was engaged, and v/hom 
he attacked in consequence in a violently satirical poem, 
after he was persuaded by his friends to abandon his intention of 
obtaining redress in a court of law. He was carefully just in his 
conduct ; and it is mentioned of him, that when he was travel- 
ling through Asia as a private individual,'^- he contented him- 
self often with the entertainment of common inns, instead of 
taxing the hospitality of the principal inhabitants, which, it 
seems, was the usual practice of the Roman nobility in their 
journeys through the provinces. When the inns could not accom- 
modate him, he applied to the magistrates to receive him, but as 
he used no imperious or threatening language, he frequently was 
treated with neglect. This is an odious picture of the ordinary 
tyranny of the Roman government, and the debasement of char- 
acter which such a system produced among those who suffered 
from it ; nay, even Cato himself is said to have been much of- 
fended when he was not treated with attention, and to have 
warned the magistrates that other Romans would not imitate his 
forbearance, but would exact by force a better reception. It is a 
wretched state of society when good men are proud of themselves 
merely for abstaining from acts of positive injustice. 

In preparing himself to enter upon his political career at 
Rome, Cato had resolved to support the ancient constitution of his 
country, and to resist what he regarded as the growing corrup- 
tions of the age in which he lived. From the pursuit of this ob- 
ject he was never diverted by any considerations of friendship, 
interest, or fear ; but he did not follow it always with a cool and 
enlightened judgment ; and his personal animosities and preju- 
dices sometimes influenced him, insensibly perhaps to himself, in 

"0 Plutarch, in Catone, 6. '^2 piutarch, in Gatone, 12. 

131 Plutarch, in Catone, 7. 



PROCEEDINGS OP Q. METELLUS NEPOS, ^gg 

opposing with excessive vehemence those whom he deemed the 
enemies of the commonwealth. The debate concerning the ac- 
compUces of Catihne was well calculated to display the predomi- 
nant features of Cato's character : his civil courage and contempt 
of popularity in braving the odium which was likely, owing to 
Ceesar's speech, to fall upon those who voted for the death of the 
criminals ; his zealous support of the old authority of the senate, 
and his abhorrence of those who sought to overturn it. But a 
very short time before he had given a proof of his zeal, the wisdom 
of which was more questionable, in joining to prosecute L. 
Mursena, one of the consuls elect, for bribery during his election, 
a charge which he could not substantiate, and which was likely 
to divide unseasonably the friends of the constitution at a moment 
when their close union was so necessary. On the whole, how- 
ever, the senate looked forward to his services with sanguine 
hope during the ensuing year ; and the support of one firm tri- 
bune was particularly needed, as Gl. Metellus Nepos, a friend of 
Pompey and a warm enemy of the aristocracy, who was one of 
Cato's colleagues in the tribuneship, was expected to employ his 
year of office in promoting measures most unwelcome to the 
party of the senate. 

The first measure which was adopted, on Cato's recommenda- 
tion, displayed a more politic and conciliating temper than he usual- 
ly appeared to possess. Already the poorest classes of the people 
began to murmur at the execution of Catiline's ac- proceedings of a. Me- 

",. J, I'iiiii J. tellus Nepos against 

complices, and to complain that the senate was the aristocracy. 
prompt enough in repressing seditions, but never bestowed a 
thought on relieving the sufferings of the poorer citizens. Q,. 
Metellus was disposed to support these discontents by charging 
Cicero with the illegal murder of Roman citizens without trial ; 
and C, Caesar, the idol of the populace, was ready to unite his in- 
trigues and his eloquence to further the same purposes. Cato, 
therefore, advised the senate to pass a corn law,'^^ by which the 
sum of 1250 talents was to be annually employed in purchasing 
corn for the maintenance of the poor ; and the thankfulness with 
which this bounty was received ought to have encouraged the 
senate to devote their attention seriously to the discovery of some 
plan for the permanent improvement of the condition of the lower 
classes of the community. As for the attacks made by Metellus upon 
Cicero's consulship, they had no other immediate effect than to draw 
from the senate some strong resolutions,'^* by which every person 
who should presume to question the justice of the late executions 
was declared an enemy to his country, Metellus after this did 
not venture to proceed any further ; but he proposed a law for the 

"3 Plutarch, in Catone, 26 ; in Ceb- '^* Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 49. edit, 
sare, 8. Leunclav. 



190 CLODIUS IS DETECTED IN CESAR'S HOUSE. 

recall of,Pompey with his army, to remedy the existing griev- 
ances of the state ; and when this measm'e was frustrated by the 
opposition of Cato. he left Rome, and withdrew to Pompey's 
army,'^^ as if apprehending personal danger from the violence of 
his opponents. At the same time C. Caesar was suspended by 
a decree of the senate from the discharge of his office as prse- 
tor ;>^« but on his submitting to their authority, and refusing the 
proffered aid of the populace to reinstate him by force, he was 
soon afterwards restored by another decree, and received many 
compliments in the senate on his dutiful behaviour. The year 
then appears to have passed on in tolerable tranquillity, except 
that apprehensions were entertained by many lest Pompey, ex- 
asperated at the pretended affronts offered to Metellus, should be 
tempted to follow the example of Sylla, and cross over with his 
army into Italy to interfere by force with the government. But 
Pompey was greatly wronged by these suspicions. He was am- 
bitious, indeed, of exercising a commanding influence in the com- 
monwealth, and was gratified by seeing one of his lieutenants, 
M. Calpurnius Piso, elected consul, when he sent him home from 
the army to be a candidate for that dignity, and had avowedly 
exerted all his interest in his favour. This, however, was the 
utmost extent of his wishes ; and far from entertaining any trea- 
sonable or revengeful designs, he no sooner landed in Italy in the 
winter of this year,'" than he disbanded his army and repaired to 
Ketum of Pompey to 1^0^10, attended ouly by a few of hisfriends. As lie 
Rome. -^a.s not allowed to enter the city whilst laying claim 

to a triumph, the people, in compliment to him, were assembled 
without the walls, and he there addressed them for the first time 
after an absence of six years. All parties were waiting with 
anxiety to hear his sentiments on the state of the republic, and all, 
according to Cicero, were alike disappointed. ^^^ But it may well 
be doubted whether it were really a just subject of blame in Pom- 
pey, that his speech did not espouse sufficiently the interests of 
any particular party to satisfy their expectations, or excite their 
applause. 

A short time before the end of the year 691, an affair had 
p. ciodioe is detected talvcu placc which, at the moment of Pompey's ar- 
ing t?rceiebration"of rlval, was attracting particularly the public atten- 
BonaTa'"'' °' *' tiou. P. Clodius Pulchcr, a young man of the 
highest nobility, whose father and grandfsither had both been 
consuls, was detected in disguise in the house of C. Caesar,'^' 
during the celebration of certain mysteries, which were annually 
performed at the houses of some of the higher magistrates, and 

"5 Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 49. Plu- '" Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XIV. 
tarch, in Catone, 29. Velieius Paterculus, II. 40. 

"• Suetonius, in Julio Csesare, 16. '^^ Ad Atticum, I. epist. XIV. 

'^ Cicero, ad Atticuni, I. epist. XII. 



C^SAR RECEIVES SPAIN AS HIS PROVINCE. 191 

from which every person of the male sex was most carefully ex- 
cluded. Clodius was a man of infamous life, and the cause com- 
monly alleged for this act of profanation, was an adulterous intrigue 
in which he was said to be engaged with Csesar's wife.'*" The 
matter, however, was taken up very earnestly, and being mention- 
ed in the senate by Q.. Conificius, was submitted to the pontifices, 
and by them pronounced to be an act of sacrilegious wickedness.'*' 
Upon this decision a motion was founded in the senate to bring 
Clodius to trial, and this gave occasion to some warm debates. 
The offender, from various causes, was provided with powerful 
supporters : his family interest, probably, was extensive, and he 
had violently opposed Lucullus, and had encouraged the dis- 
content of his soldiers against him,'**^ whilst acting as that gen- 
eral's lieutenant in the war with Mithridates, by which conduct 
he had recommended himself both to the populace and to the parti- 
sans"of Pompey, to whom Lucullus was equally odious. Besides, 
there was probably a large portion of the young nobility and of 
the profligate citizens of all ranks, who naturally sympathized 
with Clodius from similarity of character, and who would regard 
him as an injured man, when threatened with a prosecution for 
an act of irreligion. Accordingly, when it was proposed to the 
people that Clodius should be brought to trial, and that the praetor 
should himself select a certain number of judges to decide the 
cause with him,'*^ M. Piso, the consul, opposed the measure, 
and the popular party were so clamorous against it, that it was 
deemed advisable to withdraw it. Q.. Fufius,^** one of the tribunes, 
then moved that Clodius should still be tried, but He is tried and acquit- 
that the judges, instead of being named by the prse- u.c.692. 
tor, should be chosen as usual by lot from the different orders in 
whose hands the judicial power was then placed. This proposal 
was approved by the people, and the trial from thenceforward, 
according to Cicero, became a mere mockery. The judges, thus 
indiscriminately chosen, were men not inaccessible either to fear 
or to corruption. The rabble (by which term must be understood 
not the poorest, but the most profligate of the people, consisting 
in a great degree of the young nobility) was clamorous for the 
acquittal of Clodius, and money was distributed so liberally by 
his friends, that sentence was pronounced in his favour by a ma- 
jority of six votes out of fifty-six. 

The trial of Clodius came on in the spring of the year 692, 
and C. Caesar about the same time set out for Spain, cassar receivei spam 
which was allotted to him as his province on the conduc?™d'ufng his 

/. 1 • . 1 • TT TIT 1 1 • command there. 

expiration 01 his praetorsnip. He had divorced his u. c. 692 3. 
wife on account of the suspicion which her character had incurred 

"" Plutarch, in Csesare, 9. Velleius i<2 Plutarch, in Lucullo, 34. 
Paterculus, II. 45. i<3 Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XIV. 

'*' Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XIII. "i Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XVI. 



192 STATE OP AFFAIRS IN ROME DURING HIS ABSENCE. 

from the circumstances of the late profanation of the mysteries ; 
but ever careful not to compromise his popularity, he had taken 
no part against Clodius,'^^ and professed not to believe that he 
was guilty. His debts were so enormous, '*« that he could not 
leave Rome till some of his friends, amongst whom M. Crassus is 
particularly mentioned, became his sureties with his creditors for 
very considerable sums. When he was thus enabled to enter 
upon the government of his province, he displayed the same abili- 
ty, and the same unscrupulous waste of human lives for the pur- 
poses of his ambition, which distinguished his subsequent career. 
In order to retrieve his fortune, to gain a military reputation, and 
to entitle himself to the honour of a triumph, he attacked some of 
the native tribes on the most frivolous pretences,'^'' and thus enrich- 
ed himself and his army, and gained the credit of a successful 
general, by the plunder and massacre of these poor barbarians. 
Probably, also, the spoils which he collected on this occasion en- 
abled him to solicit and procure from the senate an abatement of the 
taxes paid by the province of Spain,'*® a favour which of course 
gained him numerous friends amongst the wealthy inhabitants of 
the sea-ports of that country. But while thus employed, his eyes 
were constantly fixed on the state of things at Rome. The prospect 
appeared favourable to his ambition ; and, accordingly, after an ab- 
sence of about twelve months, he returned home to claim a triumph 
for his victories, and to offer himself as a candidate for the consulship. 
The remainder of the year 692 had passed away unmarked 
state of affairs in ^y any thing of considerable importance ; and L. 
Rome during his ab- Afraulus aud Q.. Metellus Celer were chosen con- 
^- ^- ^53- suls for the 3^ear following. Metellus, although the 

brother of the late tribune, Metellus Nepos, had yet shown his 
attachment on several occasions to the aristocratical party: he 
had, during his prastorship, been the means of saving C. Rabi- 
rius, when tried for the murder of Saturninus ; and when, after 
his praetorship, he was appointed to the province of Gaul, he 
had behaved with great zeal in supporting the government, 
and in opposing Catiline in the field. Afranius owed his eleva- 
tion entirely to the interest of Pompey, who, according to Cice- 
ro,'* ^ spent a large sum of money in securing votes in his fa- 
vour. He is described as a man totally destitute of political in- 
fluence, 's" and so insignificant as to have been of little or no ser- 
vice in forwarding the views of his patron. It appears that 
Pompey at this time severely felt the jealousy with which he 
was regarded by the aristocracy. His successive appointments 
to the command against the pirates and against Mithridates had 

H5 Plutarch, in Caesare, 10. '<s Hirtius, de Bello Hispaniensi, 42. 

H« Plutarch, in Caesare, 11. Suetonius, i" Ad Atticum, I. epist. XVI. § 7. 
18. ^^^ Cicero, ubi supra. Dion Cassius, 

»T Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 53. XXXVII. 51, 52. 



AGRARIAN LAW OF L. FLAVIUS. 193 

been carried in spite of the opposition of the nobles ; and in those 
commands he had given the greatest offence, first to Q,. Metellus, 
when he interfered to save the Cretans from his cruelties, and 
afterwards to L. Lnculhis, when he deprived him of the hon- 
our of finishing a war which he had so long been engaged in 
conducting. But Both Metellus and Lucullus were men of great 
influence in the senate ; and now that Pompey was returned 
from Asia, they exerted themselves to prevent the ratification of 
his various acts,'s' it being requisite that all measures adopted 
by a general in settling the state of the conquered provinces 
after a war, should receive the sanction of the senate's au- 
thority. Mortified at this treatment, and thinking it an affront 
that his measures should be separately canvassed, and confirmed 
or annulled according to the pleasure of others, he connected 
himself with the party in opposition to the senate, not intending, 
if we may judge from his general character, to follow the steps of 
Marius or Cinna, but rather fancying that he might avail himself of 
the support of the popular party, just so far as to force the aristoc- 
racy to cease from opposing him, and that, by a dexterous manage- 
ment of the two contending interests in the state, he might be ac- 
knowledged by the general deference of all to be the first person 
in the commonwealth, without raising himself by violence to a 
situation of actual supremacy. Amongst other things, he was 
particularly desirous to procure settlements of lands for the sol- 
diers who had served under him ; a reward which, if we may 
trust Plutarch's report, '^^^ he had on former occasions procured for 
those who had followed him in his early campaigns, and a mea- 
sure which was sure to confer on a general the highest populari- 
ty. Accordingly, L. Flavins, one of the tribunes, Agrarian law of l. 
as early as the month of January, brought forward ^'avius. 
an agrarian law,'^^ it having been judged expedient to extend 
the proposed grant of lands to the poorer citizens in general, as 
well as to the soldiers of Pompey, in order to make the resolution 
more acceptable to the people at large. It was intended that 
the lands to be thus distributed should be purchased by the reve- 
nue arising from Pompey's new conquests, which accordingly for 
the next five years was to be appropriated to this object.'^* This 
law, like every other of the same nature, was warmly opposed by 
the aristocracy, headed by the consul Metellus ; and on the other 
hand it was supported by Pompey, as might be imagined, with 
all his interest. Cicero declared himself favourable to the princi- 
ple of it, but proposed various modifications to -prevent it from 
injuring the rights of individuals ; and these alterations, he 
tells us, were favourably listened to by the people. The alarm 

151 Velleius Paterculus, II. 40. Florus, 153 Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XVIII. 
IV. 2. Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 52. 

152 In Lucullo, 34 is* Cicero, ad Atticura, I. epist. XIX. 



194 THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE. 

of a war in Transalpine Gaul, which threatened the state about 
the beginning of March, drew off the public attention from the 
law ; but when the prospect of affairs cleared up abroad, the in- 
ternal disputes were renewed ; and it appears, that they contin- 
ued through a great part of the year, and that the resistance of the 
aristocracy was so determined, that although L. Flavins on one 
occasion ordered the consul, Q,. Metellus, to be sent to prison for 
obstructing the progress of the law,'" yet he was finally unable 
to gain his object ; and Pompey could neither obtain settlements 
for his soldiers, nor prevail upon the senate to pass the desired 
confirmation of his acts in Asia. 

In this state of affairs Caesar returned from Spain about the 
cssar returns from middle of Juuc, wlshlug at ouco to obtalu a tri- 
spain. umph, and to offer himself as a candidate for the 

consulship. But as the time of the elections was drawing near, 
and no officer was allowed to enter the city whilst waiting the 
permission of the senate to triumph, he petitioned that he might 
be admitted as a candidate in his absence. '^^ This, however, 
being opposed in the senate, and particularly by Cato, Cssar gave 
up all thoughts of his triumph, and entering the city immediately 
commenced his canvass. He had already effected 
The rst triumvirate. ^^^^ famous coalitiou betwceu Pompey, Crassus, 
and himself, which has been distinguished by the name of the 
triumvirate, or " Commission of Three," an appellation borrowed 
from the usual number of persons employed by the senate as com- 
missioners for executing any particular service, and bestowed in 
mockery upon the three individuals, who were purposing to dis- 
pose of the whole government of the commonwealth with no 
authority but their own ambition. The secret conditions of this 
union cannot of course be otherwise known than from the subse- 
quent conduct of the parties who formed it ; but we may conjec- 
ture that Caesar was anxious to secure a military command on an 
extensive scale, which he might enjoy during several years, that 
he, too, as Pompey had done, might possess a veteran army at- 
tached to his person ; and that he might employ it, as Pompey 
had not done, in procuring for himself whatever he might choose 
to demand. Pompey, on his part, offended with the aristocracy, 
seeing that he might obtain, through Caesar's support, that ratifi- 
cation of his acts in Asia, and those settlements for his soldiers, 
which had been so long denied him ; and too vain to imagine 
that his own exploits, or his consideration among the people, could 
ever be rivalled ; contemplating, besides, the immediate prospect 
of enjoying an undivided supremacy at Rome for some years, 
during the absence of Ctesar, and too willing to calculate that the 

155 Dion Cassius, XXXVII. 52. Cicero, ^56 Suetonius, in Caesare, 18. Plutarch, 
ad Atticum, II. epist. I. in Caesare, 13. 



CONSULSHIP OP C^SAR AND BIBULUS. ^95 

danger, which is at a distance, may be timely dispelled by some 
unforeseen contingencies ; Pompey, for all these reasons, listened 
to the advances of Caesar with readiness and without suspicion. 
Crassus was, like Csesar, ambitious of obtaining a military com- 
mand ; and, perhaps, flattered himself that, while the personal 
character of his two associates might direct their jealousy chiefly 
against one another, he might be able, by his immense wealth, 
to secure himself in the enjoyment of his greatness hereafter, even 
without their co-operatio 1, But with whatever views these con- 
federates were actuated, their coalition was as dangerous to the 
state as the exorbitance of the prizes which they secured to them- 
selves, and the violence used in order to obtain them, were actually 
destructive of the existing constitution of their country. 

Supported by such powerful assistants in addition to bis own 
popularity, Caesar was elected consul without diffi- consulship of cajsar 
culty; the aristocratical party succeeding, however, u!c. mI"^' 
in giving him as a colleague M. Calpurnius Bibulus, on whose 
attachment to their cause they could fully depend. But it seems 
that the contending interests in the republic were very unequally 
matched. On the aristocratical side there was neither unanimity 
nor vigour. Q.. Catulus was lately dead, and his high character 
and long habits of acting as the head of a party, rendered his loss 
particularly severe. Those who had succeeded to his station, L, 
Lucullus, Q,. Hortensius, and others of less renown with posterity, 
were mostly engrossed, if we may believe Cicero,'^'' with their 
own private luxuries, and allowed their public duties to lie ne- 
glected. M. Cicero was in many respects so situated, as to regard 
the dissensions of his countrymen with unusual impartiality. 
His birth placed a barrier between him and the high nobility, 
which they were never able entirely to forget ; while, on the other 
hand, the principles on which he had always acted, and which he 
had more particularly enforced in his consulship, rendered him an 
object of aversion to the violent popular party, and removed him 
from any participation in the ambitious schemes of the triumvi- 
rate. But, according to his own statement, '^^ the impolicy of his 
friends, in holding a tone of unseasonable severity, had so alien- 
ated from the cause of the republic many of those whom it had 
been his endeavour in his public conduct to conciliate, that he 
considered the state of affairs utterly unpromising, and during the 
eventful year which was now about to commence, he absented 
himself almost entirely from the business of the commonwealth. 
The most active defender of the aristocratical cause was M. Cato, 
who, although he filled no magistracy, nor enjoyed any political 
rank, yet, by his birth, his unshaken integrity, and his great cou- 

^57 Ad Atticum, II. epist. I, iss ^j Atticum, II. epist. I. ; I. epist. 

XVII. XVIII. 



J 95 THE AGRARIAN LAW OF C^SAR. 

rage, had rendered himself a person of considerable importance. 
Towards Caesar he entertained a fixed animosity, which he re- 
tained to the very end of his life ; and the notoriety of this feeling 
deprived his opposition, perhaps, of some of the weight to which 
it otherwise would have been entitled. But had Cato's influence 
been much greater than it was, it could have availed little against 
the united power of Pompey, Csesar, and Crassus, supported as it 
was at present by the whole strength of the popular party, and 
arming itself unscrupulously with all those violent means which 
had been practised in former times by L. Saturninus, P. Sulpi- 
cius, Marius, or Sylla. 

We have said that Pompey had been unable to carry the 
The agrarian law of agrarian kw of L. Flavius during the preceding 
cssar. year. The first fruits of his coalition with Csesar 

were seen in the agrarian law proposed by the new consul early 
in the year, and by which it was proposed to grant settlements to 
20,000 citizens in Campania, ^^^ one of the richest districts in Italy, 
which had been let out under the Roman government since the 
second Punic war, and which no former author of an agrarian 
law, except the tribune Rullus, during the consulship of Cicero, 
had ever ventured to give up to distribution among the people. 
The division of these lands among the settlers was to be com- 
mitted to twenty commissioners, who were to be invested with 
full powers to manage it as they thought proper. It appears from 
Dion Cassius,'^" that Csesar had at first designed to do little more 
than bring forward anew the law of Flavius ; and that he sub- 
mitted it to the senate, endeavouring to procure their concurrence 
in it. But finding that body obstinate in opposing it, on no other 
grounds, it is said, but because it was an innovation, he resolved 
to propose it to the people in a more popular form, and to carry it 
by their authority alone. Bibulus, his colleague, with three of 
the tribunes, did all in their power to oppose it ; and despairing 
of success by any other means, they endeavoured to break up the 
assembly from time to time, by reporting that thunder had been 
heard,'*' an occurrence which, according to the law of Rome, 
should have immediately suspended the business of the forum. 
But P. Vatinius, a tribune, entirely devoted to Cassar, had declared 
on entering upon his office,'*'^ that he would regard none of those 
obstructions which the augurs might throw in the way of his 
measures, by reporting their observations on the state of the 
heavens ; and as he now was busily engaged in supporting the 
agrarian law, he provided an armed rabble to abet him in his pro- 
ceedings, and thus defying the opposition of his colleagues, and 
ordering Bibulus on one occasion to be sent to prison, and at 

159 Velleiu8 Paterculus, II. 44. Cicero, •*' Cicero, in Vatinium, 7. Dion Cas- 
ad Atticum, II. epist. VII. sius, XXXVIIl. 61. 

160 Dion Cassius, XXXVIIL 59. '« Cicero, in Vatinium, 6. 



THE PROVINCE OP GAUL GIVEN TO C^SAR. 197 

another time driving him out of the forum by violence, he pro- 
cured by these means the enactment of the law. 

It was after several similar riots, in which Bibulus found his 
life endangered, that he confined himself entirely to his own 
house, '®^ and contented himself with issuing strong protests and 
invectives against the measures of his colleague. Caesar thus 
finding himself relieved from all opposition, proceeded to fulfil the 
conditions of his union with Pompey, by procuring from the peo- 
ple a law ratifying all his acts j'^* and he seized the opportunity 
of gratifying the equestrian order bv another law, 
for the relief of the farmers of the 'revenue, who o*^^i^-«°f ^^sar. 
having, in their eagerness to obtain the contract, '^^ offered too 
large a sum for the rent of the taxes in the newly conquered pro- 
vinces, had afterwards petitioned the senate that this agreement 
might be relaxed a little in their favour. Their petition had been 
first presented towards the end of the year 692, and had been 
constantly rejected; Catoonall occasions speaking against it with 
great vehemence. It was now granted by the people through the 
influence of Ca3sar ; and thus the affections of a powerful body of 
men were alienated from the aristocracy, at a time when their 
assistance was most needful. 

These, however, were all of them measures with regard to which 
good and wise men might fairly differ, however much they con- 
demned the violent means by which they were carried. It now 
remained that the triumvirs should provide more directly for their 
own aggrandizement. Accordingly, P. Vatinius moved before the 
people, that the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and The province of oaui 
Illyricum should be given to Caesar for five years, given to cassar. 
with an army of three legions, *^« although the disposal of such 
commands was vested by the law, as it then stood, in the senate 
alone. The people, as may be supposed, readily agreed to the 
grant ; and the senate, wishing, perhaps, to increase the weight 
of Caesar's employments abroad, and to remove him further from 
the city, added to his government the province of Transalpine 
Gaul, and voted him another legion. Meantime Pompey had con- 
nected himself more closely with Caesar,'^'' by marrying his 
daughter Julia ; and Caesar, on his part, married Calpurnia, the 
daughter of L. Piso, intending that his father-in-law, Piso, and A. 
Gabinius, an old partisan of Pompey, should succeed in the follow- 
ing year to the consulship. At the same time, the adoption of 
P. Clodius into a plebeian family had been effected through the 
influence of Pompey and Caesar, '«^ in order that he might be able 

^S3 Cicero, in Vatinium, 9 ; adAtticum, i^^ Suetonius, in Caesare, 22. Cicero, 

II. epist. XIX. XX. XXI. in Vatinium, 15. 

is* Dion Cassius, XXXVIII. 62. is^ piutarch, in Csesare, 14. 

165 Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XVII. ^^^ Cicero, ad Atticum, II. epist. XII. ; 

XVIII. ; pro Plancio, 14. pro Domo, 16. Suetonius, in Caesare, 20. 



198 THE PROVINCE OP GAUL GIVEN TO C^SAR. 

to be elected tribune of the people. It is probable that he was 
considered generally as a useful instrument to keep the aristocrat- 
ical party in a state of depression and alarm : and Caesar, it is said, 
oifended by the manner in which Cicero spoke of the triumvirate, 
was disposed to co-operate with Clodius in those measures which 
were more particularly aimed against him personally. But the 
transactions which led to Cicero's exile belong more properly to 
the subsequent year ; and the story of Csesar's consulship may be 
closed by observing, that after seeing Piso and Gabinius elected 
consuls according to the wish of the triumvirate, and leaving 
Clodius in possession of the tribuneship, and bent on effecting the 
destruction of Cicero, he set out from Rome early in the spring of 
the year 695, to commence his long career of conquests in Gaul.'^^ 
At this point our narrative of the internal affairs of the com- 
monwealth may be allowed to pause, while the reader's attention 
is directed to a farther detail of the events which had previously oc- 
curred'in Spain, to the operations of Caesar in Gaul, and to those of 
Crassus in Parthia. The latter expedition, indeed, did not take 
place till a period somewhat later than that which we have now 
reached ; but as it is quite distinct from the course of events at 
Rome, it may be a little anticipated, in order that the thread of our 
story may not be interrupted, as we proceed from the exile of 
Cicero to the actual beginning of the civil war. 

169 Csesar, de Bello Gallico, I. 6, 7. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

CAIUS JULIUS C^SAR.— A SKETCH OP THE ROMAN HISTORY FROM 
THE APPOINTMENT OF C^SAR TO THE COMMAND [IN GAUL TO 
HIS DEATH.-FROM U.C. 695 TO 710, A.C. 59 TO_44. 

The proceedings of the triumvirate, and the supreme influence 
which its members had exercised during the consul- From u.c. 695 to 710. 
ship of Csesar were sufficient proof that the effects of coaiitfon between the 
Sylla's victory were already lost, and that the aristoc- popSTaV"^ ^^^ 
racy was unable to resist the enemies by whom it was again 
assailed. That coalition between the popular party and individ- 
uals of great personal distinction, which had before taken place 
when Marius united himself with Sulpicius, had now been re- 
peated ; and as there was now no Sylla to assert by arms the 
authority of the senate, it had been repeated with more entire 
success. The part of Sulpicius had been hitherto performed by 
Vatinius ; it was now to devolve on P. Clodius, who having en- 
tered on his tribuneship in the month of December Trbuneship of p. cio- 
694, and being supported not only by the influence kgafn'st^clcew/^"^"' 
of the triumvirs, but by the consuls elect, Piso and Gabinius, who 
would use all the authority of their office in his favour, and by the 
terror of Caesar's military force, was likely to pursue his career with 
little impediment.^ His chief object was to effect the ruin of Cicero, 
as by so doing he would at once gratify a personal enmity of his 
own, and would^deprive the senate of the most eloquent and, with 
all his faults, the most popular, and one of the most upright of their 
defenders. 

During the earlier months of Cgesar's consulship, Cicero had 
absented himself from Rome,^ but he had returned thither in June, 
soon after the passing of the law of Vatinius, which conferred on 
Caesar the command in Gaul, and the unusual power of nomina- 
ting his own lieutenants. He already apprehended the effects of 
the enmity of Clodius, and was at first inclined to accept the offer 
made him by Caesar, that he would accompany him as his lieu- 
tenant into Gaul.^ But encouraged by the apparent popularity 

1 Cicero, pro Sextio, 17. 3 Epist. ad Atticum, II. epist. XVIII. 

2 Epist. ad Atticum, II. epist. IV. — 
XVII. 

14 



200 TRIBUNESHIP OP CLODIUS. 

which he enjoyed, and receiving from Pompey the strongest as- 
surances that Clodius would not think of attacking him, and that 
if he should do so he would sacrifice his own life rather than that 
Cicero should be injured, he was persuaded to remain in Rome 
and abide the issue.^ Accordingly Clodius, as we have already 
mentioned, entered on his tribuneship in December, and immedi- 
ately professed his intention of visiting upon Cicero's head the 
execution of Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other accomplices of 
Catiline. He was sure of the support of the consuls Piso and Ga- 
binius ; and he boasted also that he was acting with the entire 
concurrence of the triumvirate. Mobs, consisting of slaves and 
the lowest of the people,^ were openly armed and organized to 
overawe every attempt of Cicero's friends to defend him by legal 
means ; and when the senate and the equestrian order, and, as 
Cicero asserts,® the great majority of respectable citizens, put on 
mourning, and assumed the dress of suppliants, to testify their 
grief and the deep interest which they felt in his cause, the con- 
suls ordered the senate to resume their usual habit ; and Gabin- 
ius in particular, in a speech addressed to the multitude, told them 
that the senate was nothing in the commonwealth, and that the 
equestrian order should soon be made to suffer for the part they 
had taken in abetting Cicero's proceedings during the late con- 
spiracy. It is added that, by his own sole authority, Gabinius 
commanded L. Lamia, a citizen who had been zealous in Cicero's 
defence, to leave Rome, and not to come within two hundred Ro- 
man miles of the city ;^ an exercise of power which is mentioned, 
indeed, as illegal and tyrannical, but which still shows to what an 
extent the consuls could carry their orders, and enforce obedience. 
The professed measure on the part of Clodius, which filled 
Cicero with such lively alarm, was a law proposed by him for the 
punishment of all persons guilty of putting a Roman citizen to 
death without trial.^ It is said that when this law was brought 
before the assembly of the people (who were summoned by Clodius 
to meet without the city, because Caesar could not otherwise, as 
commander of an army, be present at the discussion), Csesar 
spoke in favour of its principle, but wished that it should not affect 
any past transactions. This exception, however, would have so 
defeated Clodius's main object, that it was not admitted, and the 
law passed in its original form, which denounced punishment 
against any past as well as against any future violation of its 
provisions. But still, although Cicero might have been brought 
to trial under this act, yet the natural prejudice against ex post 
facto laws, together with the strong considerations that might have 
been urged in his defence, and the popularity and interest which 

♦ Epist. ad Atticum, epist. XX. ' Cicero, pro Sextio, 12, 13. 

5 Cicero.pro Sextio, 15 ; in Pisonein,5. ^ Djon Cassius, XXXVIII. 67, edit. 

* Pro Sextio, 12. Leunclav. 



POMPEY'S BEHAVIOUR TO CICERO. 201 

he possessed, might have rendered his condemnation a matter of 
great uncertainty. His own conduct, therefore, as he himself 
afterwards confessed, was the main occasion of his ruin ;^ for by 
soHciting protection, by assuming the dress of a suppliant, and ap- 
pealing to the compassion of the people, he in a manner anticipa- 
ted his own accusation, and rendered the motion of bringing him 
to trial for the measures adopted in his consulship less startling 
and extravagant to others, by seeming himself fully to expect it. 
While he was going round the city with his friends, all wearing 
the same air of dejection and entreaty,he was frequently met and in- 
sulted by parties of the armed rabble which acted under Clodius's 
orders," and he thus compromised his own dignity without any 
advantage to his interests. He particularly laboured to obtain the 
support of Pompey, from whom indeed, both on public and private 
grounds, he had a right to look for it. But Pompey Behaviour of pompey 
had entangled himself so deeply in the plans of the to^^ards cicero. 
enemies of the aristocracy, that he could not act freely on either 
side. With the usual fate of those men whose principles are not 
firm enough to keep them steadily in the path of duty, but are 
yet sufficiently powerful to check them in their deviations from it, 
and to hinder them from ever attaining the rewards of wickedness, 
Pompey already, it is probable, repented of his share in the pro- 
ceedings of the triumvirate, and found that the confirmation of his 
acts in Asia had been too dearly purchased by the loss of the good 
opinion of the better part of his countrymen, and the degradation 
to which he was reduced of being a tame spectator of the ruin of 
his friend, and of the outrages of a man like Clodius. Thus beset 
with shame and difficulties, he avoided a personal interview with 
Cicero, who came himself to his Alban villa to solicit his assist- 
ance ; and when L. Lentulus, L. Torquatus, M. Lucullus, Q,. 
Fabius Sanga," and many other persons, applied to him to the 
same effect, he referred them to the consuls, saying that he, as a 
private individual, did not like to enter into a contest with a tri- 
bune who had an armed force at his disposal ; but if the consuls 
should act in defence of the commonwealth, with the authority of 
the senate, he would take up arms to join them. We have seen 
Marius, in his sixth consulship, obliged by the senate to act against 
his own associate Saturninus ; and Pompey, it is probable, would 
gladly have obeyed a similar call to return to his own natural 
situation as defender of the commonwealth. But the call was not 
given ; the consuls, it is said, had bound themselves, for their own 
private interests, to abet all the proceedings of Clodius ;^^ and thus 
Pompey remained inactive in his villa, and Cicero, despairing of 

9 Epist. ad Atticum, III. epist. XV. " Cicero, in Pisonem, 31. 

Plut arch, in Cicerone, 30. '2 Cicero, pro Sextio, 10. 



202 CICERO WITHDRAWS FROM ROME. 

Cicero withdraws any effectual support, and unwilling, as he tells us,'* 
a decree ofba'nish- to be the occasiou of bloodshed, withdrew by night 
^ISst K*^ ^" from Rome, and went into voluntary exile. His 
departure relieved his enemies from every difficulty ; and the pun- 
ishment which a judicial sentence would hardly have pronounced, 
was easily inflicted by a legislative attainder. Clodius proposed a 
law forbidding him, in the usual language, the use of fire and water 
within four hundred miles of Italy, ^^ denouncing penalties against 
any person who should harbour him within those limits ; and 
forbidding any one to move for his recall either in the senate or 
before the people. This was carried immediately, and not, if we 
may believe Cicero, '^ by the votes of the Roman people, but in 
an almost empty forum, by the voices of that rabble which was 
the mere instrument of Clodius's violence. In addition to this, the 
property of Cicero was ordered to be confiscated ; his house on 
the Palatine hill was burnt to. the ground, its site was consecrated 
to religious purposes, and a statue of Liberty was erected on the 
place whereon it had stood. ^^ 

It has been often remarked, that it is the natural tendency of 
A change of circum- violcnt mcasures to produce a reaction; and this 
pk?rfnh?sfevor,1,ut eficct soems to have followed from the banishment 
bVthrvSnceofcTo^ of Ciccro. Scarcely had he left Italy, before the 
«^'"^- senate began to exert itself to procure his recall. 

Pompey also was at last roused by an affront offered to him by 
Clodius, of a nature peculiarly irritating. Tigranes, the son of 
the king of Armenia, was amongst the prisoners brought to Rome 
by Pompey on his return from Asia, and having remained ever 
since in captivity, was at this time under the custody of L. Fla- 
vins, one of Pompey's old adherents, and now one of the praetors. 
Clodius was bribed, as it is said, to take Tigranes out of the 
hands of Flavins, and to cause him to be set at liberty.'^ This 
happened in May, little more than a month after Cicero's retreat 
from Rome ; and Pompey from this time began to appear in the 
senate, and to complain of the late proceedings of Clodius. On 
the first of June the senate passed a resolution in favour of Cicero's 
recall, without a single dissentient voice ;'^ but Sextus iElius, one 
of the tribunes, interposed his negative, and for the present pre- 
vented it from being attended with any effect. Clodius, mean- 
while, was not wanting either in art or audacity in his endeavours 
to rid himself of those persons whose opposition he most dreaded. 
About the beginning of August, one of his slaves dropt a dagger 

13 Pro Sextio,20, et seq. >6 Cicero, pro Sextio, 24. Dion Cas- 

>■> Cicero, pro Doino, 19 ; ad Atticum, sius, XXXVIII. 70. 
III. epist. IV. XII. XV. n Dion Cassius, XXXVIII. 78. Cicero 

15 Pro Sextio, 24. ad Atticum, III. epist. VIII. 

18 Cicero, pro Sextio, 31. 



SKETCH OP THE REVOLUTIONS OF CYPRUS. 393 

near the senate house," and on being seized, and examined before 
the consul Gabinius, it was said that he had received orders from 
his master to assassinate Pompey, who was at that time in the 
senate. Whether this plot was real or fictitious, Pompey took 
alarm at it, and during the remainder of Clodius's tribuneship he 
confined himself to his house,'^" the armed rabble which acted 
under Clodius rendering it unsafe for him, it is said, to appear in 
public. The other individual whom Claudius most ^ cat^i^ gg„t j^, 
feared was M. Cato, and him he contrived to remove Cyprus. 
from Rome, by forcing him to accept a public commission which 
would employ him abroad for a considerable time.*^' Its nature 
will deserve our notice, as exemplifying the wide extent of the 
evils which the power of Rome at this period enabled a profligate 
demagogue to inflict. 

The island of Cyprus was early filled with Greek colonies, 
and was first conquered byAmasis, king of Egypt, sketch of the revoiu- 
about five hundred and forty or fifty years before "°"^ °^ *^^' **'^'^- 
the Christian era.^*^ When Egypt was overrun by Cambyses, 
the Cyprians submitted to the Persian dominion, and remained 
attached to that empire, although sometimes enjoying a practical 
independence, till its final overthrow by the arms of Alexander. 
In the division of his conquests which followed upon his untimely 
death, Cyprus was again united to the new Egyptian monarchy 
established by Ptolemy the son of Lagus f^ and although its 
possession was often disputed by the kings of Syria, yet it still 
continued among the dependencies of the crown of Egypt, and 
appears to have formed what would in modern language be called 
an appanage, being bestowed as a separate principality on some 
member of the royal family. At the time of which we are now 
speaking, it was ruled in this manner by a brother of the reign- . 
ing king of Egypt, who himself also bore the name of Ptolemy. 
It is said that Clodius, when a young man, having fallen into the 
power of the Cilician pirates, during the period of their greatness, 
applied to the king of Cyprus for money to pay his ransom,^* 
and that Ptolemy sent so small a sum that the pirates refused to 
accept it, and afterwards, from what motives we know not, re- 
leased their prisoner gratuitously. Clodius, it is added, had long 
resented the behaviour of Ptolemy on this occasion, and now 
gladly availed himself of his present power to propose a law, de- 
claring the island of Cyprus forfeited to the Roman republic. 
The only possible colour for such an act was a pretended will of 
the late king of Egypt, by which he was said to have assigned 
his dominions to the Roman people. But the reality of this in- 
strument was so questionable, that the senate had never chosen 

•9 Asconius, in Oration, pro Milone. ^'^ Herodotus, Euterpe, cap. ultim. 

20 Cicero, pro Sextio, 32. 23 Strabo, XIV. 782, edit. Xyland. 

21 Cicero, pro Sextio, 28. 2* Strabo, ubi supra. 



204 PROCEEDINGS AND BEHAVIOUR OF CATO IN CYPRUS. 

to act upon it, and the present king of Egypt had lately been ac- 
knowledged as a lawful sovereign, so that his brother, the ruler of 
Cyprus, holding his crown by the same title, was in equity equally 
included in this acknowledgment. It was sufficient, however, 
that the island was a tempting prize, and that the power of the 
Romans enabled them to seize it with impunity. Its fertility, 
indeed, and abundant resources of every kind, were highly cele- 
brated, and it was the boast of the inhabitants that they could 
build and send to sea a ship of the largest size, without applying 
to foreign countries for the supply of a single article required in 
her construction and equipment. ^^ The law for the forfeiture 
being passed, Clodius proposed by a separate law to intrust M. 
Cato with the execution of it, and he was accordingly despatched 
with praetorian authority to carry into effect a measure which he 
is said to have abhorred for its injustice. He was, besides, ordered 
to procure the restoration of certain individuals who had been 
exiled by the government of Byzantium f^ and these two employ- 
ments were expected to detain him for a considerable time at a 
distance from Rome. 

They were, however, both executed without any difficulty. 
Proceedings and be- Ptoleuiy, hearing of the sentence of deposition 
cyp™.° '^'° '" issued against him, swallowed poison in despair y^^ 
and Cato being informed of his death, sent the famous M. Brutus, 
his nephew, immediately to Cyprus, to secure the king's property, 
while he himself first went to Byzantium to discharge his com- 
mission there. As soon as this was effected he rejoined his 
nephew in Cyprus, and superintended the sale of the confiscated 
treasures with an excessive and almost ridiculous minuteness, 
allowing nothing to be sold except in his own presence, and doing 
his utmost to procure a good price for every article. '^^ Whilst he 
was thus engaged, Munatius Plancus, one of his most devoted 
friends, arrived in Cyprus to join him ; but happening to call on 
Cato when he was transacting business with his principal officer, 
he was refused admittance. He complained of this afterwards to 
Cato, and received from him a very rough answer, being told that 
Canidius, the officer with whom Cato had been engaged, was the 
person most deserving of confidence from his experience and in- 
tegrity, and that Cato therefore preferred his company. Not con- 
tent with having said this to Munatius himself, Cato, with char- 
acteristic indelicacy, repeated it afterwards to Canidius, and Muna- 
tius then, feeling himself offended, absented himself from Cato's 
table, and did not go to him when sent for to assist him in the 
despatch of business. This behaviour shocked Cato's notions of 

23 Ammianus Marcellinus, XIV. 21, 2t piutarch, in Catone,36. Ammianus 

edit. Vales. Marcellinus, ubi supra. 

28 Cicero, pro Se.xtio, 26. Plutarch, in ^ Plutarch, 37. 
Gatone, 34. 



PROCEEDINGS AT ROME IN BEHALF OF CICERO. QQS 

discipline, and he threatened to fine him for his disobedience ; but 
Munatius immediately quitted the island, and remained for some 
time in a state of alienation from his former friend. Afterwards, 
however, they both were invited to an entertainment at the same 
house, and Cato arriving after the guests had taken their places 
at the table, asked his host to which couch he ought to go ; when 
being told to choose any place that he liked, he said that he would 
then fix himself near Munatius, and accordingly he lay on the 
sofa next to him for the whole evening, but made no further ad- 
vances towards a reconciliation. But at the request of his wife 
Marcia, he afterwards wrote to Munatius, requesting him to call 
at his house as on business, and Munatius coming, and being de- 
tained by Marcia till all other visitors were gone, Cato then went 
in to him, threw his arms around him, and embraced him with 
great cordiality. This story exhibits very fairly Gate's character- 
istic good and bad qualities j^' and as Plutarch professes to copy 
it from the account of Munatius himself, it rests on sufficient au- 
thority to deserve our belief, and may therefore be readily admit- 
ted ; for the well attested personal anecdotes of eminent individu- 
als are so rare in Roman history, that we may well be pardoned 
for noticing those which do present themselves to our curiosity. 

Meanwhile the consular elections at Rome came on, and P. 
Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, and Q,. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, were 
elected to succeed Piso and Gabinius. Lentulus had been aedile 
during Cicero's consulship, and his dispositions were known to be 
such, that Cicero conceived his appointment to be a favourable 
omen for himself Metellus, during his tribuneship, had affronted 
Cicero personally, and had acted uniformly against the aristocra- 
cy ; but he was so much under the influence of Pompey, that 
nothing was to be feared from him under the present circumstan- 
ces. Accordingly, on the very day on which the New proceedings at 
new consuls came into office, P. Lentulus brought cf^ro."* ^ "^ 
the case of Cicero before the senate, and found that u.c. ess. 
body almost unanimously disposed in his favour.^" It was proposed 
that a law should be submitted to the people repealing his sen- 
tence of banishment ; but the assembly held for this purpose was 
interrupted by the armed partisans of Clodius j^* Q,. Cicero was 
assaulted and obliged to fly for his life, the tribunes friendly to 

29 Some points in this story must remind resemblance to one another ; and, had 

the reader of Dr. Johnson, who is said by Cato been a Christian, the likeness would 

Boswell to have often made indirect ad- have been more peifect. His character 

vances towards a reconciliation, when he would have been far better than it was, 

had offended his friends by some rudeness ; had he been taught to struggle against his 

expecting that they would accept such to- pride and coarseness of mind, instead of 

kens of his good will towards them, in the thinking it to his credit to indulge them, 
place of any more open apology. In fact, so Cicero, pro Sextio, 34. 
the natural dispositions of Cato and John- 3^ Cicero, pro Sextio, 35. 
son appear to have borne a considerable 



206 CICERO IS RECALLED FROM EXILE. 

Cicero's cause were driven from the forum, and great numbers of 
citizens were murdered in the riot. On a subsequent occasion, 
P. Sextius, another tribune, zealously devoted to Cicero, was 
wounded and left for dead in the temple of Castor j^'^ and these 
atrocious acts were perpetrated without receiving any check from 
the authority of the government. But T. Annius Milo, who was 
also among the tribunes of this year, and who was of a temper 
well fitted to render him a proper antagonist to Clodius in such 
times of disorder, seeing the laws utterly powerless to preserve the 
peace of the city, resolved to meet the rioters on their own 
ground ; and while on the one hand he threatened Clodius with 
a legal prosecution for his acts of violence,^^ he prepared, in the 
mean time, to restrain his outrages by force ; and, having pro- 
cured a body of gladiators and armed retainers, he enabled the 
aristocratical party to speak and act with more freedom. Then 
He is recalled from it was that the scuatc and people, with wonderful 
Sump'haVtmanner'to Unanimity, passcd the law for Cicero's recall ; and 
R°™e. on the fifth of August he returned once more to 

Italy,^^ and was received at Brundusium with a kindness which 
was a foretaste of the universal feeling soon after manifested to- 
wards him in every quarter. After a short stay at Brundusium, he 
set out on his way to the capital. Deputies from the several 
towns met him on the road with their congratulations ; and when 
he approached Rome, there was not a single individual of any 
note, except his avowed enemies, who did not come forth to wel- 
come him. As he entered by the Capene gate, the steps of the 
temples were thronged with multitudes of the poorest of the peo- 
ple, who expressed their joy by the loudest cheers ; and as he 
passed through the streets to the capitol, he was every where 
greeted with the same acclamations, and surrounded by a similar 
concourse. This was, indeed, a triumphal procession far more 
honourable than those of victorious generals ; and on this occa- 
sion it was proved, that Cicero was not only regarded by a party, 
but possessed, in an unusual degree, the respect and affection of 
the people at large. He reaped on this day the just reward of 
that upright and impartial course which he had pursued since 
the commencement of his political life ; supporting the moderate 
ascendency of the aristocratical party, yet not ashamed to advo- 
cate the rights and promote the benefit of the lower classes ; the 
queller of a profligate insurrection, but unscduced to abuse his vic- 
tory, or to gratify a spirit of animosity or ambition, by shedding 
any blood that was not demanded by justice and the safety of the 
commonwealth. 

One of the first things which he did after his return, was to 

32 Cicero, pro Sextio, 37. M Cicero.Epist. adAtticum,IV. epist.J. 

33 Cicero, pro Sextio, 40, et seq. 



RIOTS IN THE STREETS OP ROME. 207 

propose a law for investing Pompey with another po^pey is appointed 
extraordinary commission. There had been for ketHhroughOTtXs 
some time a scarcity of corn at Rome,^* which, as empire. 
was natural, disposed the multitude to tumult ; and at the time of 
Cicero's return, a mob assembled round the senate-house, and 
calling aloud that Pompey should be intrusted with the control 
of the markets, they required Cicero by name to propose a vote 
to that effect. Accordingly, the senate, on his suggestion, re- 
solved that Pompey should be appointed with full powers to man- 
age every thing relating to the supply of the corn markets in every 
part of the empire for five years ; and a law to the same purpose 
was submitted to the assembly of the people. C. Messius, however, 
one of the tribunes, proposed another law, in which Pompey's au- 
thority was extended still more, inasmuch as it conferred on him 
the control of the entire revenue of the commonwealth, gave him 
the command of a fleet and army, and bestowed on him a power 
in all the provinces paramount to that of the officers by whom 
they were immediately governed. It does not appear whether 
these additions to the original proposition were approved by the 
people or not ; but it seems most probable that they were rejected. 
Still the power actually committed to Pompey was exceedingly 
great ; and the readiness with which the people conferred such 
great charges on individual citizens, was a sure symptom of that 
helplessness in themselves, and that habit of dependence for every 
thing upon their government, which show that a nation is fit only 
for despotism. 

The remainder of the year 696 was marked by nothing that 
deserves particular notice. The senate, on the re- ^jotg in the streets of 
port of the pontifices,^^ before whom the question ^o°u1;'he'^ai^e°of"he 
had been previously argued, resolved that the con- aristocracy. 
secration of the site of Cicero's house was not valid ; and that the 
ground should be given back to him, and a sum presented to him 
out of the treasury to enable him to restore the building. Smaller 
sums were also voted to him to repair the damage which his 
country houses had sustained. But the workmen who were em- 
ployed in rebuilding his house in Rome, were dispersed on the 
third of November by the armed rabble under the command of 
Clodius ; the house of his brother Q.uintus was deliberately set on 
fire by the same assailants ; and a few days afterwards, a house 
belonging to Milo was attacked in the same manner. On this 
last occasion, however, Gt. Placcus sallied out from another of 
Mile's houses at the head of an armed party, and attacking Clo- 
dius, killed a number of his most notorious followers, and obliged 
him to save his own life by flight. At the same time, also, do- 
's Cicero, ad Atticum, IV. epist I. ^s CicerOj ad Atticum, IV. epist. II. and 

III. 



208 AFFAIR OF PTOLEMY AULETES. 

dius, as we have before mentioned, was threatened with a prose- 
cution by Milo ; but, by the assistance of his brother-in-law, Q,. 
Metellus, the consul, and of his brother, Appius Claudius, one of 
the prsetors, he succeeded in postponing his trial till after the 
comitia had been held for the election of aediles." He was a can- 
didate for that office ; calculating that, if he should gain it, he 
should be able to shelter himself under its protection from the im- 
peachment of his adversaries for another year : and being, in fact, 
elected, he immediately commenced in his turn a prosecution 
against Milo, whom he charged with disturbing the public 
peace. ^^ P. Sextius, who, when tribune, had been nearly mur- 
dered by the followers of Clodius, was now also himself brought 
to trial for the same offence ; but he was defended by Cicero in 
one of his most eloquent orations, and was acquitted. The trial 
of Milo was adjourned from time to time, till it was either aban- 
doned altogether, or may be supposed to have ended in the ac- 
quittal of the accused. 

The consuls for the year 697 were Cn. Cornelius Lentulus 
Affair of Ptolemy Marccllinus, and L. Marcius Philippus ; the former 
Egypt.'' ^° warmlydisposedinfavourofthearistocratical party; 
the latter a respectable and moderate man, who is known as the 
father-in-law of Augustus Caesar, having married Atia, his mother, 
after the death of her first husband, C. Octavius. About this 
time the partisans of Pompey endeavoured to procure for him an- 
other extraordinary command, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, ^» having 
been expelled from his throne by his subjects, had come to Rome 
during the preceding year, in the hope of recovering his kingdom 
through the assistance of the Roman government. It is said that 
he gained many partisans by bribery ; and be this as it may, the 
senate passed a vote that he should be restored, and the consul, 
P. Lentulus Spinther, to whose lot Cilicia had fallen in the distri- 
bution of provinces, was appointed to carry the vote into execu- 
tion. But in the mean time, a deputation of a hundred citizens 
of Alexandria had been despatched from Egypt to counteract, if 
possible, the effect of Ptolemy's bribes and intrigues ; and the 
king, imitating the conduct of Jugurtha on a like occasion, had 
caused the greater part of them to be assassinated, some on their 
way to Rome, and others in the city itself Still it appears that 
the influence which he had gained by his money, or by the hope 
that his restoration would afford to many an opportunity of ob- 
taining military commands and emoluments, was lilcely not only 
to save him from punishment, but even to secure his return to his 
kingdom ; when it began to be whispered that a prophecy had 
been found in the Sibylline books, warning the Romans " not to 

" Epist. ad Atticum, IV. epist. III. 39 Dion Cassiua, XXXIX. 97. 

** Cicero, pro Sextio, 44. 69. 



CiESAR AT LUCCA. 209 

restore a king of Egypt to his throne with the aid of numbers, but 
that in any other way they might effect it." On the first rumour 
of this injunction of the sibyl, C. Cato, one of the tribunes, sum- 
moned the keepers of the mystic books before the assembly of the 
people, and obliged them to repeat the oracle exactly. It may be 
hoped that he availed himself of this expedient to baffle the in- 
trigues of Ptolemy and his supporters from an honest indignation 
at their crimes, and that it was taken up by a large party in the 
senate with the same feelings. But, however this may be, the 
subject was debated with considerable warmth.^" Pompey's 
friends proposed that he should be commissioned to restore the 
king ; since his name and authority, now that the support of an 
army was forbidden, were more likely to succeed than those of 
any other person. Cicero and Hortensius insisted that P. Len- 
tulus should not be deprived of an office which the senate had 
already committed to him ; but C. Cato, finding that Pompey's 
claims were regarded with peculiar jealousy, and that the appoint- 
ment would probably remain with Lentulus, brought in a law to 
take away that officer's command.^ ^ In this he does not appear 
to have succeeded ; but his determined opposition, and the mutual 
jealousies of the partisans of Pompey and Lentulus, disappointed, 
for the present, the hopes of Ptolemy ; who, despairing of his re- 
turn, retired to Ephesus, and there, to avoid the vengeance to 
which he might be exposed from the relations of those whom he 
had murdered, he lived in a sort of sanctuary, under the protection 
of the secred precincts of the temple of Diana." 

While these transactions were occurring, Caesar, as usual, was 
passing the winter at Lucca, on the very southern 

, •. r 1 • • J J- -ii Caesar at Lucca. 

extremity oi his province, and regarding, with no 
indifferent eye, the state of affairs at Rome. He had just con- 
cluded his second campaign, which he had signalized by his 
famous victory over the Nervii ; and for this, together with his 
other successes, he soon after received from the senate an unpre- 
cedented honour, in the appointment of a solemnity of thanks- 
giving, which was to continue for fifteen days.^^ But the aristo- 
cratical party, retaining a lively resentment against him for the 
seditious tenour of his consulship, and viewing his present exten- 
sive military command with a very reasonable jealousy, were re- 
solved to avail themselves of the known sentiments of one of the 
consuls, and of the moderation of the other, to commence an 
attack upon him and his measures. Scarcely had Thearistocraticaipar- 
the present consuls been elected, when P. Rutilius lfie"aws'passedto hu 
Lupus,** one of the tribunes, brought forward in the "^oMuiship. 

4" Cicero, ad Familiares, I. epist. I. et <3 Caesar, de Bello GaIlico,ii.35. Cice- 

Beq. ro, de Provinciia Consularibus, 10, 11. 
« Cicero, ad Q. Fratrem, II. epist. III. ** Cicero, ad Quintum Fratrem, II. 

« Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 99. epist. I. • 



210 CICERO DESERTS THE ARISTOCRATICAL PARTY. 

senate the question of Caesar's agrarian law, by which the lands 
of Campania were assigned for division among the poorer citizens. 
This had been always an obnoxious measure to a large portion 
of the people, as it cut off one of the most valuable sources of the 
public revenue ; for the whole of Campania having been forfeited 
to the Roman people after the revolt of Capua in the second Punic 
war, had been since let out to individuals, and the rent arising 
from these estates afforded a considerable and constant income to 
the treasury. Thus, when P. Rullus, in the agrarian law which 
he brought forward during Cicero's consulship, had proposed to 
include Campania among the districts that were to be divided, 
Cicero attacked this as one of the most pernicious parts of the 
whole scheme. No wonder, therefore, that Cassar's law was re- 
garded by many as a measure which ought to be rescinded as 
soon as possible ; but as Pompey was not present when P. liUpus 
first laid the subject before the senate, it was judged right to post- 
pone the discussion of a question, in which the triumvirate was 
so nearly concerned, till he could attend to take a part in it. On 
the fifth of April,^^ however, after a vote had passed to grant Pom- 
pey the sum of forty millions of Roman money (322,916Z. 135. 4c?.), 
for the discharge of his duties as controller of the markets, the 
agrarian law was again mentioned ; the large grant which had 
been just made out of the treasury, made its poverty more deeply 
felt, and rendered the recovery of the Campanian rents more desi- 
rable ; and accordingly, after a stormy debate it was voted, on the 
motion of Cicero, that the question of the lands of Campania 
should be formally discussed in a full senate, on the fifteenth of 
May. But the fifteenth of May arrived, and the lands of Cam- 
pania were suffered, without dispute, to remain subject to the pro- 
visions of Caesar's law ; while, instead of commencing any attack 
on Caesar's measures, Cicero about this time delivered a speech in 
the senate full of the highest praises on his conduct in GauV« 
and recommendhig that his province should still be continued to 
him, when some members had proposed that a new officer should 
be sent out to succeed him, according to the usual practice and 
Cicero is persuaded to law of the commouwealth. It appears that Cicero, 

desert the aristocrati- . ,. , r -iiii t .t 

cai party. cvcr smcc his rctum from exile, had been disgusted 

with the high aristocratical party, and finding that they regarded 
him with jealousy, according to his own account,^'' he was natu- 
rally disposed to seek the friendship, or at least to deprecate the 
enmity, of their opponents. Accordingly, on the trial of P. Sex- 
tius, when he attacked P. Vatinius, one of Caesar's instruments 
during his consulship, with the utmost vehemence, he was care- 
ful to speak of Caesar himself in terms of respect.*^ Still he 

<5 Cicero, ad Quinlum Fratrem, II. ^'' Ad Familiares, I. epist. IX. Ad At- 
epist. V. ; ad Familiar. I. epist. IX. ticum, IV. epist. V. 

<6 De Provinciis Consularibus. ^^ Cicero, in Vntinium, 6, 7. 



RETURN OP CATO TO ROME. 21 1 

seemed disposed to adhere to the cause which he had formerly- 
upheld : he openly extolled the conduct of M. Bibulus," Csesar's 
late colleague : he supported the interests of P. Lentulus in op- 
position to the friends of Pompey, in the question of the king of 
Egypt's restoration ; and above all, his motion on the fifth of 
April seemed to be the pledge of his determined enmity to the 
party of the triumvirate. It was received as such by the high 
aristocratical party, who displayed an evident joy at the prospect 
of an irreconcileable quarrel between him, and Pompey, and 
Caesar. Cicero took alarm at this, and having probably received 
some personal grounds of offence from the aristocratical leaders, 
he despatched, within five days,^'' a small work of his own com- 
position to Caesar, couched in language designedly complimentary, 
on purpose, as he himself confesses, to bind him to his reconcili- 
ation with Csesar, and to cut off the possibihty of his reuniting 
himself with the aristocracy. Still his conduct in the senate, on 
the fifth of April, had so offended and alarmed Pompey, that leav- 
ing Rome immediately, as if to superintend the business of his 
office as controller of the markets, he paid a visit to Caesar at 
Lucca,^^ and there consulted with him upon the steps to be taken 
with regard to Cicero's opposition to their measures. From Lucca 
Pompey crossed over to Sardinia, and had an interview with Q,. 
Cicero, who held a public situation in that island.^- He dwelt 
much on the services which he had rendered to Marcus Cicero, 
and reminded duintus that he had answered to him for his bro- 
ther's attachment to the interests of the triumvirate, when solicit- 
ing their concurrence in his proposed recall from banishment. 
Quintus, it is probable, lost no time in reporting this conversation 
to his brother ; and it seems to have produced on him the desired 
effect, for he dropped, as we have seen, the prosecution of the 
Campanian question, and during the greater part of the remainder 
of the year he absented himself from political business altogether. 
It was in the early part of this year that M. Cato returned to 
Rome from Cyprus, bringing with him a considera- ^^^^.^ ^^ m. cato to 
ble treasure which had belonged to the late sove- ^'""^• 
reign of the island. As his vessel advanced up the Tiber,^^ the 
senate, headed by the two consuls, and followed by an immense 
crowd of private citizens, came out of the city, and descended 
along the banks of the river to welcome him ; but he proceeded 
without noticing this compliment, till he reached the spot where 
the treasure was to be landed. Still further to testify their regard 
for him, the senate proposed to confer on him the office of praetor 

*9 Ad Familiares, I. epist. IX. kets throughout the empire. Cicero, pro 

50 Ad Atticum, IV. epist. V. Scauro, Fragm. Orat. ab Angelo Maio 

51 Cicero, ad Familiares, I. epist. IX. editarum. 

52 He was one of Pompey's lieutenants, 53 Velleius Paterculus, II. 45. Plutarch, 
in the service of superintending the mar- in Catone, 39. 



212 ELECTION FOR THE CONSULSHIP. 

for the following year/^ by voting that he should be appointed 
praetor at the next comitia, " extra ordinem," that is, by virtue of 
the senate's resolution, independently of the votes of the centuries. 
But Cato disapproving of such an unusual measure, and conscious 
also that, if it were contested by the popular party, it would 
greatly prejudice his prospects of success when he became a can- 
didate in the ordinary manner, declined the compliment thus of- 
fered to him. It is said, also, that he complained of the conduct 
of Cicero" in wishing to declare the tribuneship of Clodius ille- 
gal, and all the acts passed in it to be consequently invalid, and 
that he openly espoused the cause of Claudius on this question. 
In doing this he was defending, in fact, the validity of his own 
proceedings in Cyprus, which, as his commission was bestowed 
on him by a law of Clodius, would themselves have lost their au- 
thority, if that commission were not legally conferred. But the 
aristocratical party in general were disposed to coalesce Avith Clo- 
dius at the present moment, because he was now at enmity with 
Pompey ; and this was one of the reasons which alienated Cicero 
from them, and inclined him, as we have seen, to relinquish his 
opposition to the triumvirate. 

L. Domitius ^nobarbus, by birth and by preference alike at- 
pompey and crassus taclicd to the aristocracy, Avas preparing to offer 
edstp!"'°'"''°"" himself as a candidate for the consulship, with the 
avowed intention of procuring the recall of Cassar from his pro- 
vinces^ It was not to be doubted that he would receive the zeal- 
ous support of the senate ; and if the comitia were held by the pre- 
sent consul Marcellinus, his election was most likely to follow. 
To prevent it, Pompey and Crassus resolved to come forward 
themselves as his opponents ; and that the comitia might not be 
held by any unfriendly person, C. CatOjS'' one of the tribunes, was 
prevailed on to stop the elections by his negative, till the year ex- 
pired and the present consuls went out of office. Whether he had 
been gained over by Pompey since his opposition to the restoration 
of king Ptolemy, or whether he only served the triumvirate from 
his aversion to the aristocratical party, we cannot clearly decide ; 
but it seems that, in forbidding the comitia, he professed only to 
retaliate upon the consul Marcellinus, who, by appointing fre- 
quent holidays, had obstructed the assembling of tire people on 
public business, and had deprived him of all opportunities of car- 
rying some laws of which he was the proposer. After all, the 
They procure their cousular elcctious wcrc disgraced by scenes of open 
success by violence, yioleuce : Domitius,^^ who persisted in trying the 
event, was prevented by force from reaching the forum ; M. Cato, 

64 Valerius Maxrmus, IV. 1. 57 Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 103. Cicero, 

55 Plutarch, in Catone, 40. Dion Cas- ad Q. Fratrem, II. epist. VI. 

sius, XXXIX. 100, edit. Leunclav. ^^ Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 105. Plu- 

56 Suetonius, in Cffisare, 24. tarch, in Catone, 41. 



THE TREBONIAN LAW. 213 

who attended him with his usual courage, was wounded, and one 
of his servants killed ; and in this manner Pompey and Crassus 
obtained their second consulship, fifteen years after they had been 
for the first time elected together to the same office. 

But although Domitius was thus excluded from the consul- 
ship, M. Cato still hoped that he should himself u c. ess. 
obtain a place among the praetors, even though he ^storshiranlTs re- 
had declined the irregular interference of the senate ■''^<='«'^- 
in his behalf His character was so respected, that if no unfair 
arts were practised by his opponents, he was likely to be success- 
ful ; but the elections were deferred, it appears, till the month of 
May f^ and then the consuls rejected a proposal made by some of 
the senators, that sixty days should elapse between the nomination 
of the prgetors and their entering upon their office, in order to al- 
low time for inquiry into any corrupt practices to which they 
might have been indebted for their success. Bribery, indeed, is 
said to have been used most unscrupulously by the triumvirate ;^" 
yet still, on the day of the comitia, Cato obtained the votes of the 
first tribe, a circumstance which so alarmed his opponents, that 
Pompey himself came forward and declared that he had heard 
thunder ; thus procuring the adjournment of the assembly, at the 
expense, it is said, of an open falsehood. In the interval thus 
gained, the party of the consuls renewed their efforts to procure 
votes, and when the election again came on, Cato was rejected. 
The other elections were equally unfavourable to the aristocracy, 
and only two of their partisans, C. Ateius Capito, and P. Aquillius 
Gallus,^^ could find a place on the list of tribunes. 

The most memorable event of this year was the law proposed 
by C. Trebonius, now tribune of the people, and a 
partisan of the triumvirate, and afterwards more '^^^ '^'^''<"»^° '*^- 
notorious as one of the assassins of Csesar. Its object was to con- 
fer a military command for a term of years on each of the consuls : 
thus, the province of Spain was assigned to Pompey,^^ and that 
of Syria to Crassus, to be held for five years, with a discretionary 
power of raising troops, and of making peace and war. After a 
most resolute opposition on the part of the two aristocratical tri- 
bunes, and of M. Cato, the law was carried by absolute violence ; 
and immediately afterwards Pompey himself proposed and car- 
ried another,®^ prolonging Caesar's command in Gaul for five, or, 
according to Dion Cassius, for three years beyond the term origi- 
nally assigned to it, and adding Germany also, as it is said, to his 
province. Crassus, who was eager to grasp the crassus sets, out from 
glory which he anticipated from an attack on the syri^^ °" *"^ "'^^ ** 

59 Cicero, ad Q. Fratrem, II. epist. IX. 62 Livy, Epitome, CV. 

«" Plutarch, in Pompeio, 52; in Catone, 63 Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 106. Plu- 

42. tarch, in Catone, 43 ; in Pompeio, 52. 
61 Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 105. 



214 CONSULSHIP OP DOMITIUS AND CLAUDIUS. 

Parthians, left Rome in the month of November," on his way to 
Syria ; but his departm'e was attended with circumstances which 
were regarded at the time as ominous of evil, and which were 
remembered more carefully after the disastrous issue of his expe- 
dition. The tribunes, Ateius and Aquillius,^^ at first attempted to 
prevent him from going, and Ateius thieatened him with impris- 
onment, but was restrained by the negative of his colleagues : 
however, when Crassus was leaving the city, as we have before 
related, he denounced the wrath of the gods against his enterprise, 
and lighting a fire at the gate through which Crassus was to pass, 
he w^ent through certain ceremonies of imprecation, devoting, with 
the most fearful curses, both the general and his army to destruc- 
tion. It is said, too, that the projected war with the Parthians 
was so unpopular, especially when combined with the manner in 
which Crassus had gained his province, that he was attended by 
nothing of that train of citizens who were used to crowd round an 
officer \vhen departing from Rome to undertake an arduous con- 
test against a foreign enemy : but that he besought Pompey to 
accompany him out of the city, in the hope that his presence 
might save him at least from any open expressions of ill-will on 
the part of the multitude. Meanwhile Pompey himself intrusted 
the command of his province to his lieutenants, and continued to 
reside in Rome, pretending that his post of controller of the mar- 
kets did not allow him to be absent from the capital ;^^ but enjoy- 
ing probably the thought, that wiiilst he, like Csesar and Crassus, 
had a province and an army at his disposal, he was living at the 
same time at the seat of government, and exercising an influence 
there which was little short of sovereignty. 

In this situation Pompey was at the utmost height of his am- 
consuishipofL.Do- bltlou ; aud accordiugly fiom thls time forward he 

mitius and Appius i.^j j. c • \ i i 

Claudius. M. cato abctted no acts oi violence, and encouraged no par- 
u^'c.°669. ties against the aristocracy, but seemed inclined to 

regard the senate as a prince would view the nobility of his 
kingdom, that is, as the most natural supports and ornaments of 
his own greatness. Thus the elections for the ensuing year 
appear to have passed without disturbance ; and L. Domitius, 
who had been the unsuccessful opponent of Pompey and Crassus, 
was now able to gain his object, and was chosen consul, together 
with Appius Claudius Pulcher, the brother of P. Clodius, and 
partisan of Caisar. M. Cato also was allowed to avail himself of 
the esteem which the people entertained for him, and was elected 
pra3tor without difficulty. Cicero's reconciliation with Caesar was 
about this time confirmed by the appointment of his brother Q.uin- 
tus to be one of Caesar's lieutenants in Gaul ; and P. Clodius had 

61 Cicero, ad Atticum, IV. epist. XIII. 66 Dion" Cassius. XXXIX. 109. 
65 Velleius Paterculus, II. 46. Plutarch, 
in Crasso, 16. 



TRIALS OP GABINIUS ON SEVERAL CHARGES. 2^5 

now somewhat declined in notoriety, and had lost much of his 
power, and perhaps of his inclination, to excite disturbances. 
The commonwealth seemed, in short, destined to enjoy a breath- 
ing time from the perpetual tumults by which it had been assail- 
ed ; but its peace rested on such slender foundations, that no intel- 
ligent observer could venture to calculate on its perpetuity. 

We have already seen that Ptolemy, kmg of Egypt, had left 
Rome in the year 697, and had retired to Ephesus, hopeless of effect- 
ing his restoration to his throne by the assistance of the Romans, 
although he had committed so many crimes to pur- ptoiemy, king of 
chase it. But in the beginning of the year following to^hTsV^rfebyA" 
he found an unexpected friend in A. Gabinius, who cabmius. 
still held the province of Syria, to which he had succeeded on the 
expiration of his consulship. Gabinius instigated, as some say, 
by private letters from Pompey,^'' and at any rate trusting to his 
protection to save him from punishment, if he were afterwards 
questioned for his conduct, did not hesitate to espouse the king's 
cause ; and, in defiance of the provisions of two recent laws of 
Sylla and Csesar, marched with his army out of his province,^* 
invaded Egypt, and having defeated the Egyptians and taken 
Alexandria, reinstated Ptolemy in his former power. Meantime, 
the Syrians, during the absence of his army,^^ suffered severely 
from the incursions of some hordes of plunderers, by whom, as by 
the common scourge of that part of Asia, the wilder parts of their 
country were occupied. They carried their complaints to Rome, 
and they met with the more favourable reception, because, from 
the distressed state of the province, which had been ill protected 
even when Gabinius was present, the taxes could not be collected, 
and the farmers of the revenue were unable to discharge their 
debt to the government. But the interest of Pompey and Crassus 
sufficiently defended Gabinius during their consulship ; and Cras- 
sus, who was going to supersede him in his province, felt himself 
possibly the more bound to secure him from molestation on his 
return to Rome. Now, however, the interest of the triumvirate 
was less predominant ; and Gabinius, when he at last arrived in 
Italy, and entered the capital by night, on the twenty-eighth of 
September,'''' found himself at once beset with prosecutions. On 
his first trial, for a violation of the Cornelian law, in ^^31^ ^tA. Gabinius, 
leading an army out of his province, he was ac- on several charges. 
quitted,'' ' partly, according to Cicero, from the want of talent in his 
accuser, and partly from the corruption of his judges. He was 
tried a second time, however, on a charge of receiving bribes from 
king Ptolemy ; and to the surprise of every one, Cicero, who had 

«7 Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 115. ""> Cicero, ad Q. Fratrem, III. epist. L 

*8 Cicero, in Pisonem, 21. 'i Cicero, ad Q. Fratrem, III. epist. IV. 

«9 Dion Cassius, XXXIX. 118. 

15 



216 INFAMOUS PLOT OP THE CONSULS. 

He is defended by evGi been his most vehement enemy, now appeared 
ed*and'goes in°to S" as his advocate.'^ This change had been brought 
about by the earnest soHcitations of Pompey/^ to whom Cicero was 
unwiUing to refuse any thing ; but the real placability of Cicero's 
disposition disposed him to lay aside his animosities ; and the 
consciousness of this feeling would make him less suspect the pu- 
rity of his own motives, Avhen he suffered himself to be won over by 
Caesar to forget his enmity to Vatinius, and when he now was 
persuaded by Pompey to defend Gabinius. His reconciliation, 
however, was of no benefit to the accused, who was condemned, 
and went into exile. 

The competition for the consulship began as usual about mid- 
Violent competition suuimor, aud was carried on with great vehemence. 
for the consulship. There were four candidates,'^* Cn. Domitius Cal- 
vinus, who had been tribune in the consulship of Csesar and Bi- 
bulus, and had distinguished himself by his steady support of the 
aristocracy ; M. Valerius Messala, who was also attached to the 
same interest; C. Memmius, who had been formerly Pompey's 
qusestor in Spain, and who now rested his hopes, in a great measure, 
on the influence of Ceesar's friends in his behalf; and M. iEmilius 
Scaurus, the son of that Scaurus who was, during so many years, 
first on the rolls of the senate, and the son-in-law of L. Sylla, who 
had married his mother, Metella. He was at this very time 
brought to trial before M. Cato, as prsetor,^^ on a charge of cor- 
ruption in the administration of his late province of Sardinia ; but 
was defended by Cicero and Hortensius, and acquitted. All these 
candidates were guilty of bribery to such an amount as to produce 
a great effect on the money market ; for they borrowed such large 
sums to carry on their canvass,^^ that the rate of interest rose in 
one day from four to eight per cent. The senate, to repress these 
proceedings,''^ wished to institute an inquiry into the conduct of 
the candidates previously to the election ; and this being prevented 
by one of the tribunes, Q,. Scasvola, another tribune in the interest 
of the senate, forbade the comitia to be held until this obstruction 
should be removed. In the mean time, C. Memmius, by the ad- 
infamous agreement vico of Pouipcy," discloscd a singular sccue of infa- 
and uvoof'theSi' ^W i" whlch hc hlmsclf was a principal actor. He 
'^°-^^^- produced and read in the senate an agreement which 

had been entered into by himself and Cn. Domitius Calvinus with 
the present consuls ; in which it was stipulated, that, if they were 
elected consuls, they would produce three augurs and two senators 
of consular dignity, who should depose to the validity of a forged 
act of the comitia curiata, and a forged decree of the senate ; that 

■^2 Valerius Maximus, IV. 2, ^s Cicero, Orat. pro Scauro. 

73 Cicero, pro Rabirio Postumo, 8. 12. ''^ Cicero, ad Atticuni, IV. epist. XV. 

''■1 Cicero, ad Atticum, IV. epist. XV. ''i Cicero, ad Atlicum, IV. epist. XVI. 

ad Q. Fratrem, II. epist. XV. ''^ Cicero, ad Atticum, IV. epiat. XVIII. 



DEATH OP POMPEY'S WIPE. 217 

these false instruments were to confer the command of certain 
provinces on the consuls of the present year, in return for the sup- 
port which they were to give to Memmius and Domitius in their 
present contest ; and if the proper witnesses could not he procured 
to prove Avhat was required, the two candidates agreed to forfeit 
to the consuls a certain sum of money. We may suppose that 
Memmius was prevailed upon by the party of the triumvirate to 
make this disclosure, in order to ruin the character of L. Domitius, 
one of the present consuls, who, as the friend of Cato, and as the 
opponent of Pompey and Crassus in the preceding year, was pe- 
culiarly obnoxious to them. He trusted besides, that, in conse- 
quence of this transaction, the elections would be postponed till 
after the expiration of the present year ; and Pompey's friends 
then thought it probable that he might be named dictator, in which 
case Memmius, as a partisan of the triumvirate, had every pros- 
pect of succeeding to the consulship. In fact, the year was suf- 
fered to pass away without any election taking place ; L. Domitius 
and Appius Claudius went out of office ; and the beginning of 
the seven hundredth year of Rome found the commonwealth in 
a state of anarchy, without any promise of a speedy return to any 
thing more regular. 

Amongst the events of the year 699 should be mentioned, how- 
ever, the death of Julia, the daughter of Csssar, and Death of juiia, the 
wife of Pompey. She died immediately after hav- ^aughti'r°oTcS"'* 
ing given birth to a daughter,'^ ^ and the child survived her only a 
few days. Her amiable character and constant affection to her 
husband had gained her the general regard of the people ; and 
this they testified by insisting on celebrating her funeral in the 
Campus Martins, a compliment scarcely ever paid to any woman 
before. It is said that Pompey had always loved her tenderly, 
and the purity and happiness of his domestic life is one of the 
most delightful points in his character. Now the tie that had 
bound him so closely to Caesar was broken, and no private con- 
siderations any longer existed to allay the jealousies and animosi- 
ties which political disputes might enkindle between then. 

The commonwealth remained without consuls for some 
months,^" the elections being continually obstructed, as it appears, 
by some of the tribunes who were in the interest of Pompey, and 
who wished to drive the aristocracy into the necessity of appoint- 
ing him dictator. Pompey, however, always pro- interregnum for 
fessed his unwillingness to accept such a trust; several montha. 
and whether he was sincere or not, he was obliged, at last, to act 
agreeably to his professions 5 and, uniting his influence to that of 
the senate, the comitia were at last suffered to be held, and Cn. 

'9 Plutarch, in Pompeio, 53. s" Cicero, ad Famil. VII. epist. XI. ad 

Q. Fratrem, III. epist. VIII. 



218 CLODIUS A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRJETORSHIP. 

Consulship of cn. Do- Domitius Calvmiis and M. Valerius Messala were 
u'c" 'too''^'^'^^''"''' elected consuls. But the same difficulties threaten- 
^""s'^ci'^ndilTtes^for ^d to arfse, with regard to the appointment of their 
the consulship. successois. T. Annius Milo/' who had borne so 

great a part in effecting Cicero's recall from banishment, P. Plau- 
tius Hypsseus, a partisan of Pompey, and who had served as his 
qusestor in the war with Mithridates, and Q,. Metellus Scipio, 
who. being by birth a member of the family of the Scipios, had been 
adopted into that of the Metelli by Q. Metellus Pius, and who 
had been accused of bribery seven years before,^^ were now can- 
didates for the consulship ; and at the same time, P. Clodius was 
ciodius a candidate aiming at bclng clcctcd prEBtor. The old enmity 
for the prstorship. ^^^t had subsistcd bctwecn Clodius and Milo now 
broke out afresh with increased violence ; and they opposed one 
another, as before, Mdth parties of armed men, who frequently- 
met and fought in the streets, while all the candidates were equal- 
ly guilty of the most scandalous corruption. Milo had the sup- 
port of the aristocratical party, and had won, moreover, a 
large share of popular favour, by the extreme magnificence of the 
games which he had lately exhibited for the entertainment of the 
multitude. He was thus not unlikely to gain his election, if the 
comitia were peaceably held ; and Clodius, to prevent this, occa- 
sionally interrupted the assemblies of the people by acts of vio- 
lence ; on one of which occasions the two consuls Avere assailed 
with stones and wounded.^ ^ Three of the tribunes also, Q,. 
Pompeius Rufns, T. Munatius Plancus Bursa, and C. Sallustius 
Crispus, the historian, were determined enemies of Milo ; and 
their negatives were probably used, as had been done in the pre- 
ceding year, to stop the election in a manner more agreeable to 
law. Cn. Domitius and M. Messala thus resigned the consulship 
at the end of the year, before any persons were named to succeed 
them ; and a period of anarchy was likely again to continue for 
some months, till one party or the other could gain a more de- 
cided ascendency. 

But an event soon occurred which totally changed the face of 
affairs. On the twentieth of January, Milo set out 
Interregnum. ^^,^^^^ Romc to go to Lauuvium, a towu of which 

he was the chief magistrate, or dictator, and where, by virtue of 
his office, he was on the following day to appoint a flamen for the 
performance of some of the religious ceremonies of the munici- 
pality. He travelled in a carriage, accompanied by his wife Fausta, 
and by one of his friends, and attended by a strong body of his 
slaves, and also by some of those gladiators whose services he 
had occasionally employed in his contests with Clodius. It was 

81 Asconius, in Ciceron. Orat. pro Mi- ^3 Cicero, Fragm. de JEre alieno Milo- 
lone. nis, ab. Angel. Maio edit. 

*2 Cicero, ad Atticum, II. epist. I. 



CLODIUS IS MURDERED BY MILO. 219 

Jate in the afternoon, and he had just passed the httle town of 
Bovillae, ascending the Alban hills, when he fell in with Clodius, 
who was on his way to Rome, mounted on horseback, and follow- 
ed by about thirty of his slaves. Clodius, it appears, had been to 
Aricia on business, and thence had returned to a villa of his own 
on the Alban hills, where he intended to pass the night ; but re- 
ceiving intelligence of the death of one Cyrus, an architect at 
Rome, whose property he expected to inherit, he left his villa at a 
late hour, purposing to travel on with all speed to the capital. 
He and Milo passed one another without disturbance ; but the 
gladiators, who were among the last of Mile's party, provoked a 
quarrel with the slaves of Clodius ; and Clodius turning back, 
and interposing in an authoritative manner, Birria, one of the 
gladiators, ran him through the shoulder with his sword. Upon 
this the fray became more general. Mile's slaves hastened 
back in greater numbers to take part in it, while Clodius was carri- 
ed into an inn at Bovillce. Meanwhile, Milo himself was inform- 
ed of what had passed, and, resolving to avail himself of the op- 
portunity which was before him, he ordered his slaves to attack 
the inn and destroy his enemy. Clodius was dragged out into 
the road, and there murdered ; his slaves shared his fate, or 
saved their lives by flying to places of concealment ; ciodius is murdered 
and his body, covered with wounds, was left on tL c.'raf.' ^°""*' 
the ground in the middle of the highway.®* 

After the perpetration of this act, Milo continued his journey 
towards Lanuvium. The body of Clodius was ta- The body of ciodius is 
ken up soon after by a senator who happened to be bu7nt bylh^Zpuilce 
returning to Rome from the country, and was sent '" "'^ senate-house. 
on by him to the capital in his own litter ; he himself (suspecting, 
probably, what was likely to follow) going back to the place 
which he had just left, in order to be out of the way of all dis- 
turbance. It was about an hour after nightfall that the body was 
brought to the house of Clodius in Rome, and there deposited in 
the court of the building. A crowd, consisting of the lowest class 
of the populace and of slaves, presently gathered round it ; and 
Fulvia, the widow of the deceased, inflamed their passions by a 
display of the wildest sorrow, as she pointed out the wounds 
with which her husband was covered. By daybreak, on the fol- 
lowing morning, the crowd was greatly increased, and the tri- 
bunes, T. Munatius and Q,. Pompeius, who were attached to the 
popular party, hastening to the spot, recommended to the people 
to take up the body in its present state, to bear it into the forum, 

84 Asconius, in Ciceron. Orat. pro tail Asconius has shown great diligence, 

Milone. This account of the death of clearness, and impartiality ; an^ his au- 

Clodius is taken from the argument pre- thority, on this occasion, may be followed 

fixed by Asconius to Cicero's speech in with entire reliance on its excellence. , 
defence of Milo. In the whole of the de- 



220 POMPEY APPOINTED SOLE CONSUL. 

and there exhibit it on the rostra. The muUitude readily follow- 
ed their directions ; and the two tribunes began to expatiate on 
the atrocity of the murder, and to inflame the pubHc indignation 
against its author. As the passions of the populace were excited 
they were more disposed to listen to the most violent suggestions ; 
and presently they carried the body from the rostra into the sen- 
ate-house, and there set fire to it on a pile made at the moment 
out of the benches, tables, and other furniture which they found 
at hand. The consequence was, as might have been expected, 
that the senate-house itself was involved in the conflagration, and 
burnt to the ground ; many of the populace, no doubt, delighting 
in the accident, and pleased to see Clodius, even after his death, 
becoming the cause of mischief to that assembly, which, during 
his lifetime, he had regarded with such unceasing enmity. 

These and several other disorders committed by the multitude 
somewhat turned the tide of public opinion, which had at first 
run strongly against Milo. He now was encouraged to return to 
Rome, to renew his canvass for the consulship, and to make a 
large distribution of money among the several tribes. The other 
candidates continued their intrigues in the same manner,^ ^ and 
parties of armed men were employed successively on all sides to 
prevent the comitia from being peaceably held, insomuch that the 
senate at last gave the usual solemn charge to the interrex, the 
tribunes of the peole, and Pompey as a proconsul holding a mili- 
tary command, " that they should provide for the safety of the 
commonwealth," and that Pompey should be commissioned to 
levy soldiers in every part of Italy to assist him in maintaining 
the public peace. But as it seemed desirable at once to remove 
the want of a supreme magistrate, and as the appointment of a 
dictator was a measure generally obnoxious, it was proposed in 
the senate by M. Bibulus, with the concurrence of M. Cato, that 
Pompey appointed Pompcy sliould forthwith be declared consul with- 
aoie consul. out any colleaguc. This seemed a complete over- 

ture on the part of the aristocracy towards a reconciliation with 
Pompey, and he received it as such, and is said to have expressed 
particularly to Cato, his thanks for the confidence which he had 
thus reposed in him.®^ He entered on his office immediately 
without opposition : whether it was admitted that the senate 
might by its own authority create a consul as well as a dictator 
on extraordinary occasions, or whether the interrex was enabled 
to hold the comitia, and the resolution of the senate was confirmed 
by the votes of the people. No sooner was he declared consul 
than he brought forward two laws with the sanc- 
pompey. ^^^^^ ^£ ^j^^ scuate;^'' one enacting that an inquiry 

85 Asconius, in Ciceron. orat. pro Mi- ^^ Plutarch, in Catone, 47, 48. 
lone. ^^ Asconius, ubi supra. 



TRIAL OP MILO. 



221 



should be instituted into the late acts of violence, and specifying 
particularly the murder of Clodius, and the burning of the senate- 
house; the other providing severer penalties for the crime of 
bribery. In both a material improvement was introduced in the 
regulation of trials : the witnesses on each side were to be pre- 
viously examined during three days, and on the following day 
both the accuser and the accused were to finish their pleadings, 
two hours being allowed to the former, and three to the latter. It 
was further enacted, that a judge should be chosen by the people 
from among the citizens of consular rank, to preside in the pro- 
posed inquiry. When these laws were first brought forward, M. 
Caelius, one of the tribunes, a man of doubtful character and 
closely connected with Milo, endeavoured to obstruct their pro- 
gress, but was deterred by a threatening expression of Pompey, 
" that he would protect the commonwealth, if necessary, by force 
of arms." Pompey, indeed, appeared personally to apprehend the 
violence of Milo. A man who had so long been accustomed to 
employ a band of gladiators in his political contests, and who 
had lately used their swords with so little scruple against his 
enemy, might well be suspected of venturing on some desperate 
measure to escape the judgment of the laws ; and Pompey, there- 
fore, surrounded his residence with a strong military guard, and 
on one occasion assembled the senate in one of the galleries of 
his own house, that they might be under the safeguard of his 
soldiers. 

Meantime L. Domitius ^nobarbus, who had been consul two 
years before, was appointed chief judge for the ap- 
proaching trials ; and the other members of the ^" of miIo. 
court were nominated by Pompey with such care that Rome had 
never seen a tribunal composed of citizens more distinguished or 
of greater integrity. M. Cato is mentioned as having been one 
of their number. Before these judges Milo was accused by two 
of the nephews of Clodius ; and the examination of witnesses, 
according to Pompey's new law, commenced on the fourth of 
April, and continued during that and the two following days. 
The proceedings were carried on in the forum ; and on the first 
day when M, Marcellus, one of Mile's advocates, was beginning 
to question one of the witnesses for the prosecution, the rabble, 
which filled the forum, and which consisted of the partisans of 
Clodius. raised so alarming a clamour that Marcellus, dreading 
some personal violence, was received within the place set apart 
for the judges, and Pompey was applied to for a guard to enable 
the accused to conduct his defence with freedom. Accordingly, 
on the following days, the court was protected by the presence of 
so strong a military force, that the examination of the witnesses; 
was concluded without a second interruption. On the afternoon 
of the third day, after the court had adjourned till its final sitting,, 



222 MILO IS CONDEMNED, 

T. Munatiiis Plaiicus addressed the multitude, and advised them 
to attend on the last day of the trial with a full display of their 
strength, to testify to the judges their own opinion of Mile's guilt, 
and not to suffer him to escape the punishment which he deserved. 
At length, on the morning of the eighth of April, the court again 
assembled ; the shops were shut throughout the city ; the forum 
was crowded by multitudes of the populace, and surrounded by 
Pompey's soldiers ; Pompey himself was present, attended by a 
select guard ; the judges, eighty-one in number, were taken by 
lot out of the larger list of persons nominated by Pompey, and the 
commencement of the pleadings was awaited in a silence of the 
deepest interest by the immense concourse of people that thronged 
the foram. The accusers were three in number, Appius Claudius, 
one of Clodius's nephews, M. Antonius, who was afterwards so 
distinguished, and P. Valerius Nepos ; and their speeches, accord- 
ing to Pompey's law, were limited to two hours altogether. Cicero 
arose to reply in defence of Milo, but it is said that he was so con- 
fused by the clamours and outcries of the populace devoted to the 
party of Clodius, that he did not speak with his usual force and 
eloquence. Before the sentence of the court Avas to be pronounced, 
fifteen judges were challenged by the accusers, and as many by 
Milo, so that there were left only fifty-one persons who actually 
decided the cause, and out of these there were found thirteen who 
voted in favour of the accused, and thirty-eight who condemned 
He is condemned, and ^Im. Whcu the evcut of the trial was known he 
goes into exile. wout into cxile, and fixed his abode at Massilia, or 

Marseilles, in Gaul ; he was also tried after his departure for three 
other distinct offences ; for bribery, for illegal caballing and com- 
binations, and for acts of violence, and was successively found 
guilty on all. But the triumph of his enemies was limited to the 
ruin of Milo alone, for when, shortly afterwards, M. Saufeius was 
accused for having headed the assault on the inn at Bovillse, he 
was acquitted, although the charge was notoriously true ; and 
this decision was owing to the universal abhorrence in which the 
memory of Clodius was held. On the other hand. Sex. Clodius 
and T. Munatius Plancus ^^ were brought to trial as the instiga- 
tors of that riot in which the senate-house had been burnt ; and 
they, together with several others of the same party, were found 
guilty. Thus justice seemed to be administered with unusual 
impartiality ; and Pompey's behaviour fully justified the confidence 
which his countrymen had shown in conferring on him an 
authority so extensive and so unprecedented. 

After he had held the consulship alone for some months, he 
chose for his colleague L. Scipio. The new consul had been one 
of the candidates for that office at the beginning of the year, and 

88 Cicero, ad Familiar. VII. epist. II. 



AND GOES INTO EXILE. 223 

his daughter Cornelia had lately become the wife of Pompey. 
Several prosecutions for bribery were going on at this time, under 
the new law of Pompey ; and another measure was either pro- 
posed by him, or was now for the first time carried into effect, in 
order still further to check that immoderate competition for public 
offices which had of late been so injurious to the commonwealth. 
It was enacted ^^ that no magistrate should be appointed to the 
government of a province till five years had elapsed from the 
expiration of his magistracy ; but at the same time Ave are told, 
that Pompey did not hesitate to procure for himself a continuation 
of his command in Spain for five additional years. This act of 
most ill-judged ambition was attended with consequences more 
disastrous to his country than Pompey could be expected to foresee. 
His conduct since the beginning of his consulship had greatly re- 
conciled him to the aristocratical party ; and the severe laws which 
he had brought forward to correct the public disorders, combined 
with the desire which he still manifested to maintain his own 
supremacy in reputation and dignity, gave no small alarm to all 
those who hoped to rise in the commonwealth by corruption or 
tumults, as if Pompey, having himself gained the height which 
he coveted, was resolved to employ his power in barring up the 
path against all others. Above all, Caesar and his immediate 
partisans regarded the present course of Pompey's administration 
with the utmost jealousy. Caesar's own command in Gaul had 
now lasted for more than six years, and in less than four years 
more it would naturally expire ; he had then the prospect of re- 
turning to Rome as a private citizen, while Pompey would still 
retain the command of an army, and, from his late conduct, was 
likely to enjoy, at least in a far greater degree than himself, the 
confidence and support of the aristocracy. Before his connexion 
then with Pompey was disturbed by a more decided separation of 
their interests, and while the remembrance of his daughter Julia 
was still ahve in the heart of her husband, notwithstanding his 
recent marriage with another, he resolved to avail himself of Pom- 
pey's influence to secure a point most essential to his future de- 
signs. He might represent with some plausibility, that while 
Pompey was combining the possession of civil and military au- 
thority in his own person, he ought not himself to be debarred 
from pursuing his career of honours at home, because the service 
of the state was still detaining him in Gaul ; and he proposed, 
accordingly, that he might be allowed to become a candidate for 
the consulship in his absence, without resigning the command of 
his army, or leaving the important duties of his province. To this 
Pompey not only assented, but even himself^" applied to Cicero 

89 Dion Cassius, XL. 147. 80 Cicero, ad Atticum, VIL epist. L 



224 PROCEEDINGS OP CJESAR TO GAIN POPULARITY. 

Law allowing cssar to obtain his concurreiice in the measure, and ac- 
for''the'^oShip1n covdingly a law, such as Caesar desired, was brought 
his absence. forward by some of the tribunes, and was passed in 

spite of the most vehement opposition on the part of Cato.^' But 
when Csesar's friends expressed a desire to obtain a still further 
extension of the term of his command in Gaul, Pompey was un- 
willing to support them, and, according to Plutarch,^^ he asserted 
that he had letters from Caesar in his possession, in which Caesar 
himself professed that he was tired of the labours of a military 
life, and that he would gladly be relieved by the appointment of a 
successor. 

While, however, Caesar was thus affecting to be disgusted 
Proceedings of Ccesar with his actual situatiou, he was in reality making 
iw?tV." '° ^'"'^ ^°^"" it subservient in many ways to the designs which 
he entertained against the liberties of his country. During the 
present summer he had, in fact, completed the conquest of Gaul 
by the defeat of the formidable confederacy organized by Yer- 
cingetorix, and by the capture of Alesia. By his successive vic- 
tories he had amassed a treasure which, if we judge by the effects 
ascribed to it, must have been enormous. He is said to have 
spared no expense in gaining over every person whose support at 
Rome might be valuable. He lent Cicei'O^^ a large sum of money 
to enable him to rebuild his houses after his return from banish- 
ment ; he won the favour of the populace by commencing several 
public works in the city,*^ by giving splendid exhibitions of gladi- 
ators, and by offering entertainments to the multitude in honour 
of his daughter Julia's memory. To his own army his liberalities 
were almost unbounded ; while his camp presented a place of 
refuge to the needy, the profligate, the debtors, and even the crimi- 
nals,^^ who found it cojivenient to retreat from the capital. When 
it is remembered that the object of all this profusion was the en- 
slaving of his country, and that the means which enabled him to 
practise it were derived from the unprovoked pillage of ttie towns 
and temples of Gaul, and the sale of those unfortunate barbarians, 
who, in the course of his unjust wars, became his prisoners, it 
may be justly doubted whether the life of any individual recorded 
in history was ever productive of a greater amount of human 
misery, or has been marked with a deeper stain of wickedness. 

Meantime the year drew near its close, and the consular elec- 
consuishipofser. tions wcrc again approaching. The candidates 
Ma^cei'ius.''" wcrc Scrvius Sulpicius, a man eminent for his great 

knowledge as a lawyer, M. Claudius Marcellus, and M. Cato ; 

•i Livy, Epitome, CVII. M Suetonius, in Cecsare, 26. 

92 In Pompeio, 56. 95 Cicero, Philippic. II. 20. Suetonius, 

»» Cicero, ad Atticum, V. eplst. V. VI. ; 27. 
VII. epist. III. VIII. Ad Familiar, I. 
epist. IX. 



CJESAR SUPPORTS THE PEOPLE NORTH OF THE PO. 335 

and as Cato was generally unpopular with the multitude, from 
his exertions to stop that traffic in votes by which they were bene- 
fited, Sulpicius and Marcellus were elected. Marcellus was a 
partisan of Pompey, and as such was disposed to act against 
CsBsar ; for although the two leaders professed a friendship for 
each other, yet their respective adherents already conducted them-* 
selves as if an open quarrel had taken place between them. From 
this point it becomes necessary to trace minutely the progress of 
those disputes which so soon terminated in the civil war ; and to 
these, indeed, our attention for the present will be chiefly confined. 
It may be remembered that the party of Marius and Cinna, 
during the former civil dissensions, derived its main csesar supports the 
strength from the support of the Italian allies, whose noAh'of the'ro^tS 
claim to the rights of Roman citizenship had been dtyinshlpf^"""^" 
always opposed by the aristocracy, and favoured ^- ^- '^^^■ 
by the popular leaders. The event of what is called the Italian 
war, had procured for the Italians all that they desired ; and the 
victory of Sylla had, as we have seen, deprived them only, in a 
few instances, of the advantages which they had gained. But 
the inhabitants of the country between the Po and the Alps had 
not yet been raised to an equality with the other people of the 
peninsula ; and their cause accordingly was espoused by those 
who wished to gain popularity, in the same manner as the privi- 
leges of the other Italians had been contended for on former occa- 
sions. We have already seen that when M. Crassus was censor, 
in the year 688, he had wished to extend the rights of citizenship 
to the people beyond the Po, but was prevented by the opposition 
of his colleague, Q,. Catulus ; and it is said, that Csesar^^ had even 
then exerted himself on the popular side of the question, and had 
secretly instigated the Transpadani to assert their claims by an 
open insurrection; The command which he had since enjoyed 
in the north of Italy, was likely to make him more desirous of 
ingratiating himself with its inhabitants ; and whilst he was dis- 
posed on the first favourable opportunity to procure for them in 
general the freedom of Rome, he had, in the mean time, availed 
himself of a power conferred on him by the Vatinian law," under 
which he held his command, and had bestowed on some of the 
towns north of the Po, the rank and title of Roman colonies ; so 
that any of their inhabitants, who had held any public office in their 
own city, became, in consequence, ipso facto citizens of Rome. 
Among the towns thus favoured, was Comum, situated at the foot 
of the Lake Laris, or, as it is now called, the Lake of Como ; a 
place which had first received an accession of inhabitants from 
Cn. Pompeius, the father of Pompey,'^ and secondly from C. Sei- 
se Suetonius,inCaesare, 8. 93 Strabo, V. 236, edit. Xyland. 
9T Suetonius, 28. Appian, de Bell. 
Civil. II. 26. 



226 C^SAR SUPPORTS THE PEOPLE NORTH OP THE PO. 

pio, who appears to have been exiled under the dictatorship of 
Sylla," and whose misfortune may possibly have communica- 
ted itself in part to the town which he had patronized. Caesar 
had added five thousand names to the list of its citizens, amongst 
whom were five hundred Greeks of distinction, who did not reside 
•at Comum, but enjoyed the privileges of the new establishment, 
and reflected some honour on its name. One of the citizens of 
Comum,""" who had held a magistracy there, happened to go to 
Rome in the present year, and claimed the rights of a Roman 
citizen, on the ground of having filled a public office in a Roman 
colony. The consul, M. Marcellus, one of whose ancestors, by 
a curious coincidence, had first recovered Comum'"' to the Roman 
dominion after the second Punic war, desirous to express his ani- 
mosity against Caesar, insisted that the man's claim was ill-ground- 
ed, and, in mockery of his pretensions, ordered him to be publicly 
scourged, desiring him, it is said, to go and show his stripes to 
Caesar. This act of unmanly cruelty was probably of considerable 
service to the cause of him whom it was meant to insult ; and 
Cicero, in a letter to Atticus,^''^ expressed his opinion, that it would 
give as' great offence to Pompey as to Caesar ; for Pompey, it seems, 
with his usual true liberality, '"^ had taken the case of the people 
beyond the Po into his consideration, and was disposed to grant 
them the rights of citizenship as an act of justice, and as one of 
those honourable means by which a government may most wisely 
and most efiectually defeat the designs of the disaffected. 

The conduct of the consul Marcellus in this affair was a bad 
omen of his temper and judgment in the management of 
the main dispute between the government and Caesar. As the 
war in Gaul drew more evidently towards its close, men seemed 
on a sudden to be awakened to a sense of their error in having 
allowed an officer of Caesar's character to form and discipline a 
formidable army in the very position that was most dangerous to 
the safety of the commonwealth ; and the wish was generally 
entertained of removing him by any means whatever from a sta- 
tion so threatening. But while Marcellus was anxious to effect 
this object at any risk, his colleague, Ser. Sulpicius,'" endeavour- 
ed to moderate the vehemence of the senate by representing the 
inevitable evils of all civil wars, and by bidding them remember 
the natural tendency of such contests to increase in havoc and 
atrocity, each improving on the precedent of that which had gone 
before it. His moderation, and the unwillingness of Pompey to 
give Caesar any just cause of offence, prevented all violent pro- 
ceedings for the present. It was only resolved by the senate,'" 

99 Cicero, pro Sextio, 3. '« A.d Atticum, V. epist. XL 

100 Appian, de Bell. Civil. IL26. Flu- '"^ Ad Atticum, V. epist. II. 

tarch, in Csesare, 29. '"* Cicero, ad Familiar. IV. epist. III. 

iw Livy, XXXIII. 36. *"5 Cicero, ad Famil. VIII. epist. VIIL 



TRIBUNESHIP OF C. CURIO. 



227 



that the disposal of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, and of the 
other provinces, should be discussed early in the following year ; 
that if any person should endeavour to stop the jurisdiction of the 
senate in this affair, he should be considered as acting against 
the good of the commonwealth : and that further, the cases of all 
soldiers in Caesar's army claiming their discharge, should then be 
considered and determined by the senate. Several of the tri- 
bunes, who had been gained by Caesar, interposed their negatives 
upon this resolution ; so that it could not have the force of a de- 
cree, but was registered in the journals, under the title of the 
" authority " of the senate. 

Meantime, C. Claudius Marcellus, a cousin of the present con- 
sul, and L. ^Emilius Paullus, were elected consuls consulship of c.Mar- 
for the following year; and C. Scribonius Curio u c.%ra. ^' ^''"""'' 
was at the same time elected one of the tribunes.^°s Tabuneshipofc. cu- 
Curio was a man of talents, of eloquence, of a restless thirst for 
distinction, and impatient of slight or neglect. In the year of 
Caesar's consulship, when the power of the triumvirate was at its 
height, he had courted and obtained popular applause by the bold- 
ness with which he had on some occasions attacked their con- 
duct.""' When candidate for the tribuneship, he professed him- 
self warmly devoted to the party of the senate, being irritated, as 
it is said,'"^ by some appearances of indifference or contempt which 
were manifested towards him by Caesar, But, in the very first 
month of his tribuneship, he was again disgusted with the aris- 
tocracy,'"® because he could not obtain the insertion of several ad- 
ditional days in the calendar to lengthen the term of his office ; 
the intercalary month, which was inserted every year to make 
up the deficiency in the ordinary computation, being made longer 
or shorter at the discretion of the pontifices, according as the in- 
terests or wishes of their friends or their party might require. 
On this ground. Curio began to espouse the cause of Caesar ; and 
a man so jealous of affront, so ambitious, and with so little steadi- 
ness of character, may be as naturally supposed to have acted 
from this motive, as from that still baser one which rumour im- 
puted to him,''° namely, that he was bribed, by Casar, with a 
sum amounting to about 80,000/. of our money. 

Yet the year 703 passed on to its close without witnessing 
any thing more decisive than the year which had preceded it. 
We are told that Curio professed to follow a course of perfect im- 
partiafity,'" and proposed that both Caesar and Pompey should 
alike resign their military commands, that so the republic might 
have nothing to fear from the ambition of either. When he 

■ ii^ Cicero, ad Familiar. II. epist. VII. H" Velleius Paterculus, II. 48. 

'"■' Cicero, ad Atticum, II. epist. XVIII. "i Plutarch, in Pompeio, 58. Dion Cas- 

i"" Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. IV. sius, XL. 150. 
'"s Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. VI. 



228 TRIBUNESHIP OP C. CURIO. 

found that the senate was disinclined to this measure, he began 
to attack Pompey with great freedom,'"^ and to charge him with 
aspiring to the exercise of an absolute power over his country. 
Pompey's influence in Rome had long been so predominant, that 
language of this sort was considered a proof of extraordinary 
boldness ; and the multitude, who always delight to hear invec- 
tives against the powerful, testified their admiration of Curio by 
the liveliest acclamations. He threatened, it seems, "^ to negative 
any decision to which the senate might come respecting Caesar's 
recall ; and thus the question concerning the provinces was not 
brought forward on the first of March, as the senate had before 
resolved, but was suffered to remain undetermined. It was un- 
derstood to be Pompey's wish that Caesar should now be recalled 
on the thirteenth of November, and that he should on no account 
be permitted to enjoy the consulship till he had resigned the 
command of his army. Two years before, it will be remembered, 
Pompey had interested himself in obtaining for Csesar the veiy 
privilege which he now wished to take away ; but in that inter- 
val Cgesar had shown a disposition to resist the senate's authori- 
ty, which might give just suspicion of his real designs. Pompey 
justly considered the successive interference of the tribunes to de- 
prive the senate of their lawful control over the provinces, as 
equivalent to an actual disobedience on the part of Caesar, "< in 
whose behalf and at whose instigation this interference was ex- 
erted ; and the general attachment of all profligate and desperate 
citizens to the cause of Caesar, and the resort of many persons of 
that description to his camp, where they were received with the 
utmost cordiality, seemed to warn the commonwealth of the dan- 
ger of allowing the liead of such a party to unite the command 
of an army with the highest post in the civil government. It is 
the opinion of Cicero, "^ that if the senate had consented, accord- 
ing to many former precedents, to apply officially to Curio, and 
request that he would not interpose his negative on their decrees, 
he would have yielded to their wishes. But this, though pro- 
posed by M. Marcellus,"^ was not adopted ; and Curio, still fur- 
ther incensed at this apparent contempt of his power, persisted in 
his threats of preventing the execution of every thing which the 
senate might resolve. In this manner nothing was determined; 
and the final decision of the question, with its important results, a 
civil war on the one hand, or on the other the removal of all ap- 
prehensions or violence from Caesar, was to be reserved for the 
following year, when C. Claudius Marcellus and L. Cornelius 

'»« Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. XI. "* Ad Atticum, VII. eplst. VII. 
Appian, de Bell. Civil. II. 28. "• Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epiet. 

"3 Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. XI. XIII. 

'" Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. 
VIII. 



ILLNESS OF POMPEY. 229 

Lentulus were appointed consuls ; the last individuals who ever 
held that office by the unforced votes of the Roman people. 

It was about the autumn of the year 702 that Pompey was 
seized with a dangerous fever/ ^'' while at his villa 
in the neighbourhood of Naples. No sooner was ' "^^^° Pompey. 
his illness known, than public prayers for his safety were offered 
up throughout Italy ; and when he recovered, sacrifices of 
thanksgiving were equally general : every town celebrated the 
event by a spontaneous festival ; and when he was able to travel 
to Rome, multitudes of people thronged the road with garlands on 
their heads and torches in their hands, scattering flowers around 
him as he passed. These signs of the attachment of his country- 
men were received by Pompey with peculiar pleasure, for he had 
ever been more ambitious of popularity than of power ; but it is said 
that they misled him fatally on the present occasion, by inducing 
him to estimate from them the real strength of his cause. So 
confident, indeed, did he feel in the support of the Italians, that 
he is said to have declared that he could raise armies in Italy by 
the stamp of his foot.^^^ But he was for a long time also lulled 
into security from a belief that Caesar would not dare to make 
war upon his country for his own private quarrel ; perhaps, also, 
from a persuasion that he would be restrained by his personal 
friendship to himself This last hope, however, vanished to- 
wards the close of the year 703, when Hirtius,''^ one of Ceesar's 
most confidential officers, arrived at Rome from the army, and de- 
parted again without visiting Pompey, or holding any communi- 
cation with him ; and still more, when M. Antonius, who had 
been Csesar's qusestor in Gaul, and who had been just elected tri- 
bune, to support his interests, delivered a speech full of violent 
invectives against Pompey,^*^" and attacking the whole of his pub- 
lic life from its first commencement. From that time he looked 
forward to a war as inevitable, and professed that he dreaded 
such an issue less than the prospect of allowing Csesar to enjoy 
any political power at Rome. His own great name, the large 
army held by his lieutenants in Spain, the attachment of the 
Italians, and the authority of the senate, seemed to insure him an 
easy victory over a single rebel general and his army, however 
great might be the talents of the one and the discipline of the 
other. 

But, in fact, the mass of the people of Italy were not disposed 
to risk their lives and properties in the maintenance ofthe supporters and 
of a contest which seemed little to affect their indi- resources of pompey. 
vidual interests. The landed proprietors and the monied men 

*"' Plutarch, in Pompeio, 57. Velleius '" Cicero, ad Atticum, VIL epist. IV. 
Paterculus, II. 48. ''^ Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. VIIL 

"• Plutarch, la Pompeio, 57. 



230 POMPEY'S SUPPORTERS AND RESOURCES. 

were anxious for peace/^' and indifferent whether Pompey or 
Caesar administered the affairs of the commonwealth ; the citi- 
zens of the different towns, who had been so earnest in their 
prayers for Pompey's safety, were not equally ready to endure 
for his sake the evils of a civil war, and the devastation of their 
homes and families ; while the men of desperate fortunes, the 
debtor, the profligate, and the robber, were eager in every part of 
Italy to embrace the cause of Ca3sar, as that of revolution, and 
impunity, and plunder. If from Italy we extend our view to the" 
provinces, we shall find them influenced by particular causes to 
favour one leader or the other, according as their principal inhab- 
itants had received favours from either, or as either happened to 
be better known amongst them, or to possess the strongest mili- 
tary force in their immediate neighbourhood. But degraded and 
oppressed as they had been under the Roman government, it mat- 
tered little to them by what party the system under which they 
suffered was administered ; unless there were some among them, 
who, looking upon Caesar as the advocate of popular and liberal 
principles, indulged the hope that he would extend more generally 
that envied privilege of Roman citizenship, which he had already 
wished to impart far wider than his aristocratical opponents were 
willing to allow. 

The authority of the senate, and the reputation of upholding 
the cause of law and good principles, might have conferred a 
greater strength on Pompey, had it not been for the selfish, and 
narrow, and profligate views and characters which marked so 
many of his adherents. His own private morals were remarka- 
bly pure and amiable ; but his father-in-law Metellus Scipio had, 
even when consul, ^^^ been present at an entertainment where 
such a scene of debauchery Avas exhibited, as no honest man, and 
far less a magistrate, should have sanctioned by his presence ; 
and Appius Claudius, with whom he Avas also become connected 
by the marriage of his son CucEUS with Appius's daughter, after 
having committed many acts of oppression and extortion in his 
province of Cilicia, after having been detected, during his consul- 
ship, in the grossest corruption, and having obtained a general 
character of prodigality and voluptuousness, was now invested 
with the oflice of censor,^*^^ and was exerting his power with the 
utmost severity. He expelled a number of persons from the 
senate, and amongst the rest C. Sallustius Crispus, the historian ; 
he also degraded many individuals of the equestrian order ; and 
although we are not told that any of his censures were unde- 
served, yet they seemed inconsistent with the character of the 
censor himself, and served to alienate from the cause of the aris- 

'*' Cicero, ad Atticum, VIII. epist. '" Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. 
Xlir. XIV. Dion Cassius, XL. 150. 

'« Valerius Maximus, IX. 1. 



CiESAR'S SUPPORTERS AND RESOURCES. 331 

tocracy those who had become obnoxious to them. L. Lentulus, 
one of the consuls for the present year, was overwhelmed with 
debts/^^ and is said to have eagerly anticipated a civil war, as 
the means of restoring his broken fortunes. To these might be 
added that large proportion of selfish and narrowminded indi- 
viduals who are the incumbrance and disgrace of every aristo- 
cracy ; men who abhor all reform, because they think it may in- 
terfere with their comforts and privileges, and who consider their 
own ascendency rather as the ultimate object of government than 
as one of the means by which the general welfare of the state is 
promoted ; men, in short, who burden a noble cause with all the 
weight of their pride and ignorance, who render its success a 
donbtful blessing, and lessen the regret with which the good re- 
gard its overthrow. This was the party which had persecuted 
the patriotic tribune C. Cornelius, which had largely shared in 
the oppression and plunder of the provinces, and which had con- 
stantly opposed the extension of the right of Roman citizenship to 
the allied or subject states of Italy. 

On the other hand, the strength of Cassar's cause was of a na- 
ture most likely to insure victory in such a state of orthe supporters and 
society as the Roman empire exhibited. He was resources of caesar. 
at the head of an army of nine legions, ^^^ consisting of such ve- 
teran soldiers, that one of the legions was considered inferior to 
the rest in tried courage and experience because it had not served 
more than eight campaigns. The people of the north of Italy 
were attached to him as the supporter of their claims for a parti- 
cipation in the freedom of Rome ; and Gaul, however ill-affected 
towards the man who had been at once her spoiler and enslaver, 
was yet forced to assist his views by the wealth which her plun- 
der put at his disposal, and which enabled him to purchase parti- 
sans at Rome, and to bind his soldiers to his interests by the libe- 
rality of his donations. Thus amply provided with means to 
strike the first blow with effect, he trusted on his approach to 
Rome to find a numerous party ready to co-operate with him. 
The profligate young nobility, '^^ who had conspired with Catiline 
in his plans of rapine and murder, and who had since abetted the 
vices and the riots of P. Clodius, were eager to support this new 
leader, who would accomplish, as they trusted, what their former 
chiefs had attempted in vain ; and the rabble of the capital, con- 
stantly at enmity with the existing government, was a certain 
ally to any one who should head a rebellion. All these were 
likely to be active assistants in promoting the cause which they 
espoused ; while a large proportion of those who wished well to 

^^* Velleius Paterculus, II. 49. Csesar, ^-^ Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. V. 
de Bell. Civili, I. 4. VII. 

'« Caesar, de Bell. Gallico, VIII. 46. 
54. 

16 



232 SITUATION OP SEVERAL EMINENT INDIVIDUALS. 

the constitution would confine their zeal to words or feelings, and 
would make no practical exertions in its behalf. 
_>^ It may not be uninteresting to the reader here to mention the 
Of the situation of disposltious and the situation of some of the most 
d!vifuakat"h"e be- eminent citizens of the commonwealth, when the 

ginning of the civil ■ ^ .i /> • . 

war. Civil war was now on the very eve oi its commence- 

ment. We have spoken of the departnre of M. Crassus from 
Rome in the year 698, to take possession of his province of Syria, 
and to attempt the conquest of Parthia ; and we have shown how, 
in the year 700, his ambition, unaccompanied by corresponding 
ability, had been finally checked by his defeat and death in Meso- 
potamia. The wreck of his army had been led back into Syria 
with considerable difficulty by C. Cassius,^^^ afterwards one of the 
assassins of Csesar, and at this time acting as quaestor under 
Crassus. Cassius covered the province of Syria against the at- 
tacks of the Parthians, and maintained his ground till, in the year 
702, M. Cicero was appointed to succeed Appius Claudius in the 
government of Cilicia, and M. Bibulus arrived in Syria to take the 
command in the room of Cassius. Neither of these officers, how- 
ever, had much to do in their military capacity, for the Parthians 
were unequal to make any serious impression on the Roman em- 
pire : but Cicero'^^ carried with him into his province the virtues 
of his private life, and preserved both himself and all his subordi- 
nate officers pure from every act of oppression or extortion ; nor 
would he even accept from the provincials those sums for the 
maintenance of his personal establishment, Avhich, as the gov- 
ernors received no salary from the treasury at home, were consid- 
ered as the ordinary allowances of their office. He resigned his 
command and returned to Italy about the close of the year 703, 
but remained at his difi^erent villas for some time ; and when he 
moved towards Rome early in January, ^^^ he did not enter the 
city, or take any part in the debates of the senate, as he intended 
to prefer his claim to a triumph, on account of some successes 
which he had gained over the plundering tribes of the mountain 
districts of Cilicia ; and under these circumstances he was obliged 
by law to remain without the walls of Rome. M. Cato was con- 
stantly attending the senate, and, as might be supposed, gave his 
warm support to every resolution hostile to Csesar. L. Lncullus 
and his brother Maicus had been some time dead ; and Q. Hor- 
tensius, another of the oldest and most eloquent members of the 
aristocratical party, had died more recently, in the summer of the 
year 703.'^° P. Lentiilus Spinther, to whose exertions, when con- 
sul, Cicero professed himself greatly indebted for his restoration 
from exile, and L. Domitius, the colleague of Appius Claudius in 

»" Velleius Paterculus, II. 4G. "9 Cicero, ad Familiar. XVI. epist. XI. 

'-" Ad Atticum, V. and VI. passim. '^° Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. 
Ad Familiar. XV. epist. V. XIII. 



C^SAR DICTATES TERMS TO THE SENATE. 333 

the consulship, and implicated together with him in the corrupt 
agreement which they entered into with two of the candidates for 
the succession to their office, were both in Rome, and disposed to 
co-operate zealously with Pompey. L. Piso, the father-in-law of 
Caesar, who had been consul with A. Gabinius in the year of 
Cicero's banishment, was now censor, and although wishing to 
restrain the vehement proceedings of his colleague Appius Clau- 
dius,^^' was yet by no means inclined to go all lengths with 
Csesar. Of the persons who afterwards acted a principal part in 
the civil wars, M. Antonius was now just elected one of the tri- 
bunes in order to further Caesar's designs ; M. Brutus was in 
Rome, but although known as the nephew of Cato, and as the 
son-in-law of Appius Claudius, and considered as a young man 
of promising talents,^^*^ he had as yet taken no conspicuous share 
in public aflairs. C. Cassius was one of the tribunes for this 
year;'^^ and C. Octavius, now a boy of about thirteen years of 
age, was living at Rome under the care of his mother Atia, and 
of his father-in-law L. Philippus. 

On the first of January, 704,'^* when the new consuls, L. 
Lentulus and C. Marcellus, entered on their office, cssar dictates terms 
C. Curio, the late tribune, arrived in Rome from '<> the senate. 
Caesar's quarters, whither he had lately betaken himself, and 
presents a letter from Caesar, addressed to the senate. It was read 
at the earnest desire of the tribunes, Gt. Cassius and M. Antonius ; 
and contained a statement of Caesar's services to the common- 
wealth, and professions of his willingness to resign his province 
and the command of his army, if Pompey would do the same ; 
but, otherwise, he said, it was unjust to desire him to expose him- 
self without defence to the attempts of his enemies. This lan- 
guage was in itself rebellious, inasmuch as it dictated the terms on 
which alone he would obey the senate's orders ; the consuls, there- 
fore, refused to take the sense of the senate on the contents of the 
letter, but called upon the assembly to consider generally the 
state of the republic. A vehement debate ensues, '^^ and one or 
two members urged that Caesar's proposals should be accepted ; 
but a great majority resolved, on the motion of Scipio, Pompey's 
father-in-law, that Caesar should resign the com- He is ordered by the 
mand of his army by a certain day, and that if he |enatetogiveuphis 
refused to comply with this order, his conduct should "^^ ^- ™*- "^^t- ^^■ 
be regarded as treasonable. The account of these transactions, 
which goes under Csesar's name, whether it be really the work of 
himself or of one of his partisans, naturally represents this de- 
cision as being almost extorted from the fears of the senate by 
the violence of Pompey's friends, and the apprehension of the 

«> Dion Cassius, XL. 150. «3* Appian, de Bell. Civili, II. 32. Dion 

"2 Cicero, ad Familiar. III. epist. X. Cassius, XLI. 152. 

>*' Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XXI. "^ CsEsar, de Bell. Civili, I. 2. 



234 THE SENATE PREPARES FOR WAR. 

military force which he commanded in the neighbourhood of the 
capital ; but it appears from Cicero's more impartial testimony, 
that although many of the more moderate senators'^^ were pro- 
bably hurried into resolutions more violent than they thought ex- 
pedient, yet that Caesar's pretensions were generally regarded 
with abhorrence ; and that they doubted not of the justice, but of 
The senate's decree is the poHcy of requiring him to give up his army. 
thrtribunes.'' '"" " Howevor, tlic decrce of the senate was negatived 
by the tribunes Antonius and Cassius ;'" upon which the consuls 
submitted to the assembly the consideration of this negative : and 
it was debated in what manner they should counteract it. Noth- 
ing was determined on that day ; but for some days afterwards 
the more violent party amongst the aristocracy exerted their ut- 
most endeavours to bring the question of Caesar's obedience at 
once to an issue. The senators, as had often been practised on 
similar occasions, put on mourning, '^^ to express their feeling 
that the interests of the commonwealth were obstructed by the 
behaviour of the tribunes ; and when this step failed to produce any 
effect, they had recourse to their highest prerogative, and gave their 
Charge given to the chargc to thc consuls, prsBtors, tribunes, and pro- 
thrsafet%f the' (foS- consuls. " to providc for the safety of the republic." 
monweaith. This resolutiou was entered on the journals of 

the senate on the seventh of January ; and no sooner was it 
The tribunes fly to passcd, and Autouius and Cassius, together with 
csesar. Curio, '2^ profcsslng to believe their lives in danger, 

fled in disguise from Rome, and hastened to escape to Csesar, who 
was at that time at Ravenna, waiting for the result of his appli- 
cation to the senate. 

It appears from one of Cicero's letters,"" written a few days 
before the first of January, that he had calculated 
^■^■'"^- on such an event as the flight of the tribunes, and 

on its affording Caesar a pretext for commencing his rebellion. 
When it had actually taken place, the senate were well aware of 
the consequences to which it would lead, and began to make pre- 
The senate prepares paratlous for their defcncc. Italy was divided into 
fofw^- several districts,'^' each of which was to be placed 

under the command of a separate oflicer ; soldiers were ordered 
to be every where levied : money was voted from the treasury to 
be placed at Pompey's disposal ; and the provinces were assigned 
to their respective goA'ernors, as proconsuls or praetors. Among 
these appointments, Syria was given to P. Scipio, and the two 
Gauls, which Caesar had been just summoned to resign, were be- 

"* Cicero, ad Familiares, XVI. epist. '^ Cicero, ad Famiiiares, XVI. epist. 
XI. XII. ; ad Atticum.VII cpist.VII. IX. XI. Plutarch, in Cajsare, 31. 
'" Casar, de Bell. Civiii, I. 2,3. '<" Ad Aiticum, VII. epist. IX. 

'» Dion Cassius, XLI. 153. '*' Cicero, ad Familiar. XVI. epist. 

XI. XII. Caesar, de Bello Civiii, I. 6. 



C^SAR COMMENCES HIS REBELLION. 335 

stowed on L. Domitius and M. Considius Nonianus. The whole 
direction of the forces of the commonwealth was conferred on 
Pompey, whose reputation as a general was still so high, that 
none contemplated the probability of his meeting with an equal 
antagonist. 

We have said that, when Curio, Antonius, and Cassius fled 
from Rome, Caesar was at Ravenna. He had with cssar commences lua 
him at this time no other troops than the thir- rebeUion. 
teenth legion, which had been ordered to winter in Cisalpine 
Gaul ;^*^ the remainder of his army, amounting to eight legions, 
was avowedly quartered beyond the Alps ; but, by the celerity 
with which one of these legions afterwards joined him, it may be 
conjectured that it had already received orders to march into Italy, 
and was on the Italian side of the Alps at the moment when 
Caesar commenced hostihties. No sooner was he informed of the 
flight of the tribunes, and of the subsequent resolutions of the 
senate, then he assembled his soldiers, and expatiated on the vio- 
lence offered to the tribunitian character, and on the attempts of 
his enemies to despoil him of his dignity, by forcing him to resign 
his province before the term of his command was expired. Thus 
much of his speech is avowed by his own party historian : the 
promises which he made to his followers, and the prospect of spoil 
and settlements of lands which he held out as the price of their 
rebellion, it was not equally to his purpose to record, although 
such temptations were not likely to be omitted. He found his 
troops perfectly disposed to follow him ; and, accordingly, having 
sent out some men in small parties, with orders to enter unob- 
served into Ariminum^*^ and secure the town, he himself left his 
quarters at Ravenna late in the evening, and on the followang 
morning, on his arrival at Ariraitmm, found that his enterprise 
had succeeded, and that the place was already in 

1 ■ rni • 4.1 n J. ^ c • i He seizes Ariminum. 

his power. This was the first town of importance 
without the limits of his province on the road to Rome ; and by 
thus seizing it he declared himself in open rebellion, and that from 
this time forward he was to follow, without reserve, that path of 
lawless usurpation on which he had for so many years been pre- 
paring himself to enter. 

At Ariminum he met the fugitive tribunes,^" whom he intro- 
duced without delay to his army, in the disguise in which they had 
fled from Rome, desiring them, at the same time, to relate the vio- 
lence which they had suffered. Caesar himself then began to 
speak, imploring the troops, with the most passionate expressions 
of grief and indignation, to revenge at once the injuries of their 
general, and the outrage offered to the tribunes of the people. In 

'** Caesar, I. 7. ^** Caesar, I. 8. Suetonius, in Caesare, 

'" Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 35. 33. Dion Cassius, XLI. 154. 



<236 FRUITLESS NEGOTIATION FOR PEACE. 

the vehemence of his words and gestures he frequently held up 
his left hand, and, pointing to the ring which he wore as the well- 
known badge of patrician or equestrian rank, he declared, that he 
would sooner part with that ring, than fail to satisfy the amplest 
wishes of those who were now oftering their aid to maintain his 
dignity. The action being seen at a greater distance than the 
words could be heard, many of the soldiers imagined that he was 
promising to advance all his followers to the rank and fortune of 
the equestrian order ; and this impression tended not a little to 
Fruitless negotiation inAame thclr zcal in his behalf At Ariminum,"^ 
for peace. also, CsBsar fouud L. Roscius, one of the praetors, 

and L. Caesar, a distant relation of his own, who had both left 
Rome in the hopes of preventing an open rupture, and had both 
consented to be the bearers of a private communication from Pom- 
pey to Csesar. Its substance was an exculpation of his ov/n con- 
duct in the part he had lately taken ; in which he said, he had 
been actuated by no unkindly feelings towards Csesar, but from 
a sense of his paramount duty to the commonwealth ; and he 
urged Csesar, in like manner, to wave his personal animosities in 
consideration of his country, and not to seek to punish his enemies 
at the price of involving the republic in a civil war. Csesar pro- 
fessed to be equally desirous of avoiding bloodshed ; and requested 
L. Csesar and Roscius to carry back his answer to Pompey, in 
which, after studiously dwelhng on his supposed injuries, he 
proposed that both Pompey and himself should give up their 
armies ; that Pompey should go into Spain ; and that all the 
forces in Italy should be disbanded on both sides, that the senate 
and people of Rome might deliberate and decide on all public ques- 
tions with perfect freedom ; that he himself should resign his pi'o- 
vinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul to the officers appointed 
by the senate to succeed him ; and that he should go to Rome to 
offer himself as a candidate for the consulship. Finally, he re- 
quested a personal conference with Pompey, that all things might 
be fully adjusted, and that both parties might pledge themselves 
by oath to fulfil ihe conditions of the treaty. 

With these terms, L. Cassar and L. Roscius set out on their 
return to Pompey. Bat Csesar, '^« not waiting to see the result of 
the negotiation, despatched M. Antonius, who already had taken 
a command under him, with five cohorts, to occupy Arretium. 
and, at the same time, he secured, with other detachments, the 
towns of Ancona, Fanum, and Pisaurum. These movements 
excited a general consternation ;'^'' many of the inhabitants fled 
from their homes at the approach of Csesar's troops ; while men 

'« Caesar, I. 8, 9. Cicero, ad Famili- ad Familiar. XVI. epist. XII. Cassar, I. 
area, XVI. epist. XII. II. 

'^* Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XI. ; ^^ Appian, II. 35. Cicero, ad Atticum . 

VII. epist. XI. 



POMPEY IS UNABLE TO MEET THE ENEMY. 337 

of broken fortunes, and those who had been obliged to go into 
exile for their crimes, welcomed his arrival as the sure forerunner 
of a total revolution. The alarm reached Rome, and produced 
there such an effect, that Pompey judged it expedient to abandon 
the capital, as he had not yet organized a force sufficient to with- 
stand the sudden advance of the rebel army. Accordingly, be- 
fore the nineteenth of January, '^^ he withdrew from Rome to- 
wards Capua, accompanied by both the consuls. The senate and con- 

^1 , . • . f ,1 • c • • i i J suls withdraw from 

the great majority 01 the mterior magistrates, and Rome. 
most of the members of the senate. The treasury was left closely 
locked, from the precipitation with which the capital was aban- 
doned, or from a reluctance to carry off treasures, some of which 
were looked upon as almost too sacred to be invaded, and from 
the hope that Caesar would in this point imitate the forbearance 
of his adversaries. It is said that the sight of every thing most 
noble in the commonwealth being now obliged to fly from their 
country, produced a strong effect on the public mind ;'^^ and that 
compassion for Pompey, and indignation against Csesar, were for 
a time the prevailing feelings of the inhabitants of the country 
towns of Italy. So general was the abhorrence of Csesar's rebel- 
lion, that his own father-in-law, L. Piso,!^" did not hesitate to ac- 
company the senate in their retreat from Rome ; and T. Labie- 
nus,^^' who had been one of his most favoured lieutenants in 
Gaul, left him immediately on the open disclosure of his designs 
against his country, and joined Pompey and the consuls at The- 
arium in Campania, on the twenty-fourth of January. 

It appears certain that Pompey was taken by surprise through 
the suddenness with which Csesar commenced pompey is unawe to 
hostilities. Trusting probably to the season of the meet the enemy. 
year, he had imagined that he should have two or three months 
before him ; in the course of which he might organize a sufficient 
force in Italy to prevent Caesar from advancing, and might thus 
detain him in Cisalpine Gaul, till the Spanish army, under Afra- 
nius and Petreius, could cross the Pyrenees and the Alps to com- 
plete his destruction by assailing him in the rear. But when Cae- 
sar opened the campaign just as the winter was setting in, (for, 
owing to the defective state of the Roman calendar, the nominal 
time was nearly two months in advance of the real season of the 
year,) Pompey's preparations for defence were paralyzed. His 
actual force consisted chiefly of two legions, '^^^ which had been 
withdrawn from Caesar's army by a decree of the senate in the 
preceding year, as a reinforcement for the troops of the republic 
in Syria, but which had been detained in Italy, when it became 

"« Cicero, ad Alticum, VII. epist. X. '" Ad Atticum, VII. epist. XII. XIII. 

XI. XTI. Appian 37. >" Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epiat. XIH. 

1*9 Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XL Caesar, de Bell. Gallico, VIII. 54. 
'*" Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XIIL 



238 POMPEY'S PLAN OF OPERATIONS. 

apparent that the commoiiweahh had more to fear on the side of 
Gaul than of Parthia. These legions had shared in Caesar's vic- 
tories for several years, and when he at last parted from them, 
one, or both of them, had received from him a liberal donation in 
money, '5^ so that Pompey dared not risk a battle while these 
troops composed the whole or the greater part of his army.^*^^ His 
officers, it is true, were. busy in levying soldiers in different parts 
of Italy, and particularly in Picenum, that district in which his 
father had acquired such great influence, and from which he had 
himself raised an army of three legions by his personal exertions, 
when he first took part in public affairs, and though then a youth, 
without rank or public authority, marched at the head of 15,000 
men to support the cause of L. Sylla. But these levies were car- 
ried on to a great disadvantage under the constant alarm of the 
approach of the enemy.'" Under such circumstances, men are 
unwilling to come forward ; and those who might have rallied 
round any regular force which was already organized, had no in- 
clination to take upon themselves all the dangers of an unequal 
resistance. Moreover, Pompey might have remembered, from 
the experience of the last civil war, that soldiers were easily in- 
duced to desert officers with whom they were little acquainted, 
and whose names bore no commanding authority ; and that it 
was, therefore, most unsafe to trust generals of no reputation with 
untried soldiers in the presence of such an enemy as Caesar, 
whose liberality was hardly less notorious than his victories. 
His plan of His fixcd determination, accordingly, was, to avoid 

operations. a,ll engagements with the rebels, and to concentrate 

all the troops that his lieutenants could collect in the south of 
Italy ; after which he would be guided by circumstances, whe- 
ther still to make a stand in Italy, or to cross over into Greece, 
and there organize the resources of that part of the empire in 
which his past exploits had gained for him so many connexions, 
and such an universal popularity. 

Pompey was still with the consuls at Theanum,^^^ when L. 
Cassar arrived there on the twenty-fifth of January, with Cassar's 
proposed conditions of peace. They were immediately discussed 
in a council composed of the principal senators ; and it was 
agreed to accept them, provided that Cassar would withdraw his 
troops from all the towns which he had occupied beyond the 
limits of his province. L. Caesar was sent back with this an- 
swer; and Cicero seems for a time to have flattered himseh^that 
the war would thus be brought to a conclusion. But Cassar had 
no intention of resting contented with the permission of standing 

>" Appian, de Bell. Civil. II. 29. Flu- '« Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XIII. 

tarch, in Coesare, 29. '^^ Cicero, ad Atticuin, VII. epist. XIV. 

'** Epist. Pompeii nd Doinilium, apud XV. 
Ciceroii. ad Atiicum, VIII. epist. XII. 



L. DOMITIUS ATTEMPTS TO DEFEND CORFINIUM. 239 

for the consulship when the sovereignty of Rome seemed within 
his grasp. He complained that Pompey still continued his levies 
of soldiers ;'^'' that his making no mention of a personal confer- 
ence betrayed an unwillingness to terminate the quarrel ; and 
that he had fixed no particular day for his departure into 
Spain. He meantime, ^^^ on his own part, was raising troops, and 
awaiting the arrival of the other legions of his own army ; he 
had occupied the towns of Iguvium and Auximum,^^^ which 
Pompey's officers had in vain attempted to defend : and Curio, ^^^ 
in his private correspondence, ridiculed the mission of L. Caesar, 
as a measure from which the invader had never really anticipated 
any result. Pompey, still pursuing his plan of retreating, was at 
Luceria in Apulia, in the beginning of February ; and on the 
seventh of that month, ^^^ encouraged by Cassar's protracted ab- 
sence, he sent orders to the consuls at Capua, that they should 
return with all haste to Rome and carry off the sacred treasures 
from the treasury, which he now regretted thai he had left behind. 
But the consuls, judging the attempt too hazardous, declined to 
put it in execution. The disobedience of one of his officers soon 
afterwards brought upon Pompey a far severer loss. P. Lentulus 
Spinther and L, Vibullius Rufus'^^ had been employed in levying 
soldiers in Picenum, and although, as Cassar advanced, many of 
their men deserted and went over to him, yet Vibullius was able 
to reach Corfinium with fourteen corhorts, amounting to about 
eight thousand four hundred men. At Corfinium he found L. 
Domitius J^nobarbus, with a force of twelve cohorts, and C. 
Hirrus with five more, which he had collected from the 
neighbourhood of Camerinum. In this manner an l. Domitius attempts 
army was assembled of nearly nineteen thousand ^ defend corfinium. 
men ; and Vibullius^^' wrote to Pompey to tell him that Do- 
mitius would put the whole in motion to join him on the ninth 
of February. But instead of executing this plan, Domitius be- 
gan to flatter himself that he was strong enough to arrest Cae- 
sar's progress, or at any rate to threaten his rear with serious 
annoyance, if he should venture to pass beyond him, and 
advance in pursuit of Pompey. It appears, too, that private 
interests were allowed to influence his decision;'" and that 
some individuals who possessed property in the neighbourhood, 
induced him to remain, that he might protect their villas, or ena- 
ble them to remove their effects with greater security. He even 
divided his forces, and attempted to hold the towns of Sulmo 

1" Csesar, de Bello Civilli, I. 11. ad Atticum, VII. epist. XXIII.; VIII. 

i*** Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. epist. II. XI. 

XVIII. '63 Epist. Pompeii ad L. Domitium, 

1*9 Caesar, I. 12, 13. apud Ciceron. ad Atticum, VIII. epist. 

'«" Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XIX. XII. 

'^' Ad Atticum, VII. epist. XXI. is* Ibid, antea citata. 
162 Cffisar, Bell. Civili, I. 15. Cicero, 



^240 THE TROOPS MUTINY, AND SURRENDER THE TOWN. 

and Alba ; and instead of setting out to join Pompey on the 
ninth of February, he remained at Coriinium in spite of re- 
peated orders to the contrary, till Ccesar arrived before the town, 
about the fifteenth or sixteenth, '^^ with a force which cannot 
be exactly computed, as he was every day receiving reinforce- 
ments either by desertion from the enemy, or by the success 
of his levies, or by the arrival of detachments from the legions 
of his own army which he had left in Gaul. Sulmo was soon 
surrendered to his lieutenant M. Antonius;'^^ and the event of 
the siege of Corfinium was awaited with the most lively in- 
terest in every quarter. There were many persons, and Cicero 
himself was among the number, who expected that Pompey 
would march to the relief of Domitius, and considered that it 
would be most disgraceful if he tamely abandoned him. But 
Domitius had exposed himself to danger in defiance of the ex- 
press orders of the commander of the armies of the common- 
wealth ; and he had detained with him the levies from Picenum, 
on whose fidelity to his person Pompey relied with particular 
confidence, and whose presence he anxiously looked for to 
overawe the wavering inclinations of the two legions which 
he had received from Cgesar. It is possible, indeed, that a more 
enterprising general might have risked the attempt, and might 
have thought it wise to run all hazards in the hope of putting 
himself at the head of the soldiers of Picenum ; but Pompey, 
misled perhaps by the example of Sylla, seems to have attached 
too little value to the possession of Italy, and to have contem- 
plated without regret the prospect of abandoning it for the 
present, while he was preparing in Greece sufficient resources 
to enable him, as he trusted, speedily to recover it. Accord- 
ingly, having written to Domitius to warn him that he must 
look for no relief, he continued his retreat towards Brundisium, 
and reached that place about the twenty-fifth of February.'^^ 
Domitius, thus left to his own resources, soon found how unequal 
he was to the task of opposing Cassar ; his soldiers began to 
perceive his distrust of his own situation, and thought that they 
His troops mutiny, wcrc uow authorizcd to consult their own safety, ^^* 
townto'cssar. ^^ They immediately mutinied against their gene- 
rals, secured the persons of Domitius and the principal officers 
who were with him, and sent to inform Csesar that they were 
ready to open the gates to him, and to put his chief enemies into 
his power. Upon this offer he took possession of the town, and 
ordered Domitius, with the other leadei's, to be brought before 
him, when having reproached some of the number with per- 

'S5 Ibid, apud Ciceron. ad Atticum, 's- Cicero, ad Atticum, VIII. epist. IX. 

VIII. 12. XI. 

165 Ccesar, de Bell. Civil. I. 18. Cicero. 'ss Ccesar, de Bell. Civil. I. 19. 23. 
ad Atticum, VIII. epist-. IV. 



CiESAR BESIEGES POMPEY IN BRUNDISIUM. 341 

sonal ingratitude to himself, from whom they had received many- 
favours, he dismissed them all unhurt, and even allowed Domitius 
to carry off with him a considerable treasure which he had 
brought to Corfinium for the payment of his troops. The sol- 
diers he enlisted in his own army ; and immediately set out from 
Corfinium, about the twenty-second of February, to prosecute 
his march to Brundisium. In this manner Caesar, like Sylla, 
owed his first great success to the faithlessness or weakness of 
his enemy's adherents ; and the betrayal of Scipio by his own 
soldiers in Campania was now imitated by the troops at Corfini- 
um, who surrendered their post and their general, and themselves 
joined the standard of the conqueror. 

It now appeared certain that Pompey intended to abandon Italy ; 
and when this determination became known, it necessarily drove 
the Italians to throw themselves into the arms of Caesar, since 
they were left wholly at his mercy. His moderation at Corfinium 
was every where eagerly reported ; and those who at first dreaded 
the worst evils from the approach of his army,'^^ were now grate- 
ful to him in proportion to their former fears, when they saw that 
he abstained, as yet, from confiscations and proscriptions. There 
were many senators also, and men of rank and fortune,'" who, 
considering the Roman government inseparable from the posses- 
sion of Rome, did not think themselves bound to follow Pompey 
into a foreign country, and looked upon his resignation of the seat 
of government as a virtual acknowledgment that Caesar might 
now dispose of the commonwealth with some shadow of lawful 
authority. P. Lentulus having been freely spared by Caesar at 
Corfinium, was unwilling to take any further part in the quarrel ; 
and even Cicero hesitated whether he should follow Pompey into 
Greece or not, he having been left at Capua with the care of that 
part of Italy, and having afterwards been prevented fronr reaching 
Brundisium by the rapid advance of Caesar's army into Apulia. 
Meanwhile the consuls, with all the troops which they had been 
able to raise, had effected their junction with Pompey ; but some of 
his officers, endeavouring to join him from more distant parts of the 
country, found that Cssar had intercepted them. Among these 
P. Rutilius Lupus, one of the praetors, whilst trying to retreat from 
Taracina with about eighteen hundred men, fell in with Caesar's 
cavalry, upon which his soldiers immediately deserted to the 
enemy, and he himself, relinquishing the cause of Pompey as 
desperate, returned to Rome, and there began to perform the or- 
dinary duties of his office in administering justice. Caesar arrived 
before Brundisium on the ninth of March, with a cssar besieges pom- 
force amounting now to six legions, three of which pey in Brundisium. 
belonged to his own veteran army, and the other three consisted of 

1S9 Cicero, ad Atticum, VIII. epist. "" Cicero, ad Atticum, VIII. epist. 
XIII. XVI. ; IX. epist. I. 



242 POMPEY SAILS TO GREECE WITH HIS ARMY. 

the troops which he liad levied since he entered Italy. He found 
that the consuls with the greater part of tlie army/^' and with a 
large number of senators, accompanied by their wives and children, 
had embarked for the opposite coast of Greece on the fourth of 
March ; and that Pompey, with about twenty cohorts, or twelve 
thousand men, was apparently resolved to maintain Brundisium 
against him. He had, a short time before, taken prisoner one of 
Pompey's officers,'''^ whom he had sent back to Pompey, hoping, 
according to his own professions, that he would use his influence 
with his general to agree to a reconciliation. But when Pompey 
sent this officer to Cccsar''^ v/ith proposals of peace, Csesar, pretend- 
ing to consider the terms unsatisfactory, prosecuted the siege of 
Brundisium with the utmost vigour ; and on the other hand, Pom- 
pey is said to have declined another offer on the part of Caesar to 
negotiate, ^''^ alleging that he could enter into no treaty in the ab- 
sence of the consuls. At the same time, however, that Caesar was 
expressing his wish for peace, his followers, in their private re- 
ports,i^5 gave a very different representation of his intentions, and 
declared that he talked of revenging the fates of Carbo and Bru- 
tus, and those other members of the party of Marius, whom Pom- 
pey had formerly put to death ; nay, so eager was he to find 
grounds of complaint against his antagonist, that he pretended to 
consider T. Milo as the victim of Pompey's unjust persecution, 
and thus to espouse the cause of a man whose only claim on his 
support was a turbulence and factiousness of spirit resembling his 
own. Meanwhile the siege of Brundisium was pressed with vig- 
our ; and Caesar attempted to carry out two moles from the oppo- 
site sides of the harbour's mouth, with the view of blocking up 
the passage, and thus depriving the enemy of his means of retreat 
by sea. But before this work was completed, the ships which 
Pompey crosses the had transported the consuls^'^ and the first division 

sea to Greece with /•.! ■ j^ /-t , t,t-» t- 

his army. 01 thc army mto Greece, returned to Brundisnun, 

and Pompey was finally enabled to embark the remainder of his 
troops, and to put to sea, on the seventeenth of March, with the loss 
of only two transports, which ran aground at the contracted en- 
trance of the harbour, and were in this manner taken. The citizens 
of Brundisium immediately opened their gates to Caesar ; and on the 
eighteenth he entered the town and made a public address to the 
inhabitants. Thence he resolved at once to move towards Rome, 
for he was unable to follow Pompey from the want of shipping ; and 
he was anxious to take possession of the seat of government, and 

171 CfEsar, I. 25. Cicero, ad Atticum, '''■4 Caesar, I. 26. 

IX. epist. VI. 175 Cicero, ad Atlicum, IX. epist. XIV. 

"2 Epist. Cffisaris ad OppiumetBalbum, I's Caesar, de Bell. Civil. I. 27. Cicero, 

apud Ciceron. ad Atticum, IX. epist. VII. ad Atticum, IX. epist. XIV. 

173 Epist. Caesaris ad Oppium ct Balbum , 
apud Ciceron. ad Atticum, IX. epist. XIII. 



CiESAR MOVES TOWARDS ROME. 343 

then to carry his army into Spain, and destroy, if possible, the 
formidable force which was under the command of Pompey in 
that province. 

It appears that Pompey, "^'^ justly regarding Caesar and his 
partisans as rebels, had in all his proclamations denounced severe 
punishments against every one who should abet or countenance 
them ; and by this language he had alarmed and alienated the 
minds of that large portion of the Italian people who were disposed, 
above all things, to consult their own private ease and safety. 
This feeling towards the opposite party, combined with the fame 
of his antagonist's moderation, had disposed the inhabitants of the 
different towns to favour Caesar's interests, and on some occasions 
to afford him active assistance ; but now that Pompey was retired 
from Italy, the evils occasioned by his rival were more keenly felt, 
and rendered men in turn dissatisfied with him. Cgesar, although 
the mere leader of a rebellious army, began to act as if he were 
the lawful sovereign of Italy. He sent orders to the chief magis- 
trates of all the corporate towns to provide a certain number of 
ships, '^'' and cause them to be sent to Brundisium, there to be in 
readiness to transport his army into Greece ; he quartered his 
legions in different places, to the great vexation of the inhabitants, 
who were unused to such a burden in Italy ; and he continued to 
levy soldiers as he had done from the beginning of his rebellion, 
while his officers conducted themselves in the execution of a task 
odious in itself, with much superfluous insolence and offensiveness. 
The character of his partisans was, indeed, such as would have 
disgraced the most honourable cause. His own personal profliga- 
cy was faithfully imitated by his lieutenants Antonius and Curio ; 
and the reputation of the leaders, together with the revolutionary 
views which they were supposed to entertain, had attracted to 
their standard a crowd of desperate and atrocious men,i'^ whose 
appearance filled all respectable citizens with terror. Thus at- 
tended, Csesar moved from Brundisium towards c<Esar moves towards 
Rome, wishing to assemble and address the senate, ^*""'^- 
or rather the small minority of senators who had not left the capi- 
tal on the first of April. ^^^ As he was anxious to gain the sanction 
of every person of credit whom he could at all hope to influence, 
he wrote to Cicero, earnestly requesting him to meet him at Rome : 
Cicero, however, having no intention of complying with his wishes, 
had a personal interview with him on his road, about the twenty- 
eighth of March, at Formise, hoping to persuade him not to press his 
request any further. But Csesar told him'^i that his His interview witt 
absence from the senate would naturally influence '^''="''- 

1" Cicero, ad Attioum, IX. epist. X. "9 Cicero, ad Atticum, IX. epist. 

1T3 Caesar, de Bell. Civil. I. 30. Cicero, XVIII. XIX. 
ad Atticum, IX. epist. XIX. iso Ad Atticum, IX. epist. XVII. 

181 Ad Atticum, IX. epist. XVIII. 



244 CiESAR ADDRESSES THE SENATE. 

Others, and would be looked upon as a condemnation of his con- 
duct. He then urged him to appear in the senate, and endeavour 
to bring about a negotiation ; but when Cicero replied, that if he 
did so he should recommend the senate to forbid the march of 
troops into Spain, or their transport into Greece, and should 
lament the condition to which Pompey had been reduced, Gassar 
told him " that he would have nothing of that sort said ;"' and in 
conclusion, finding Cicero resolute in his refusal, he observed, 
" that if he were denied the benefit of Cicero's advice, he must 
follow such as he could procure, and should have recourse to 
extreme measures." On these terms they parted, and Caesar pro- 
ceeded on his way to Rome. 

We have already stated that there were many senators, who 
Description of the per- after Pompcy's departure from Italy, resolved to take 
Romero" rec"fve®ci" "0 further sharo in the civil war. Amongst these 
'"■ were L. Yolcatius Tullus and Manius iEmilius 

Lepidus, who had been consuls in the year 687 ;^^^ Ser. Sulpicius, 
who had been consul in the year 702 ; and C. Sosius and P. Rutili- 
us Lupus, who were two of the praetors for the present year. But of 
this number all were by no means agreed as to the propriety of 
countenancing Caesar's usurpation. The two praetors, by continu- 
ing to act in their judicial character at Rome, seemed to acknow- 
ledge that the capital was still the seat of a lawful government ; but 
L. Tullus and Ser. Sulpicius wished to remain in perfect retire- 
ment,"^ and declined to attend the meeting of senators which Cae- 
sar called together on his arrival. Another praetor, M. jEmilius Le- 
pidus, afterwards the associate of Octavius and Antonius in the sec- 
ond triumvirate, had remained at Rome when the consuls and the 
majority of the senate had left it, and was considered to be a decided 
partisan of Caesar. M. Caelius Rufus, at this time curule aedile, 
who had been tribune in the year 701, and had then taken an ac- 
tive part in behalf of Milo, was now also engaged on the side of 
Caesar, and appears to have been at this period in Rome.^^^ L. 
Caecilius Metellus, one of the tribunes, was in Rome also,'^^ but 
with very different intentions, it being his purpose to force Caesar 
to display his real contempt for the laws of his country, and to 
prove how little he himself respected the sacredness of the tribuni- 
tian character, when it was in the way of his own ambition. 
Caesar appears to have reached the capital about the time that he 
csBar addresses the pi'oposed to arrive there, that is, on the first of April, 
«^''^'^- and having assembled as many of the senators as 

could be prevailed on to obey his summons, he held to them a lan- 
guage in which he scarcely attempted to disguise the lawlessness 

182 Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XII. ; '84 Cicero, ad Familiares, VIII. epist. 
VIII. epist. I. IX. XV. ; IX. epist. I. XVI. 

'83 Ad Atticum, X. epist. III. iS5 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. IV. 

Caesar, de Bell. Civili, I. 33. 



C^SAR ROBS THE TREASURY. 245 

of his usurpation. 'ss He again repeated the story of his pretended 
injuries in not having been allowed to dictate to the government 
the terms on which he would obey their orders ; and he inveighed 
against the cruelty shone to the tribunes Antonius and Q,. Cassius, 
a cruelty which had existed at most only in intention, and proba- 
bly only in the counterfeited fears of those v/ho were its imaginary 
objects. On such provocations he thought himself entitled to be 
guilty of rebellion and usurpation ; and he entreated the senate to 
assist him in the administration of the republic, telling them plain- 
ly, at the same time, that if they were adverse to the task he 
would not burden them with it, but would govern the common- 
wealth by himself. Meanwhile he recommended that deputies 
should be sent to Pompey to endeavour to effect a peace. 

This last proposal the senate, according to Caesar's own ac- 
count,^^'' was not unwilling to embrace ; but no one could be 
found to accept the o&ce of ambassador, because they were 
all afraid to put themselves in Pompey's power after the threats 
which he had denounced against those who did not follow him 
out of Italy. This is probably a mere calumny of Caesar's : and 
a more natural cause of the general reluctance is assigned by 
Plutarch, 1^^ and implied by Cicero,^^^ that no one thought Caesar 
sincere in his offer to negotiate. He attempted to carry several 
other measures through the concurrence of the senate, but he 
found even the shadow of that body, which now alone remained, 
decidedly averse to his interests ; and L. Metellus, the tribune, 
interposed his negative on several occasions to defeat Caesar's 
objects. All the opposition was nearly indifferent to him, for he 
was little anxious to have his power supported by law ; and, as 
if he were already the despot of his country, he refused to let 
his lieutenant, C. Curio, derive his title to his command in Sicily 
from a decree of the senate, but told him that all commissions 
should proceed from himself. But when L. Metellus endeavour- 
ed, by his negative, to prevent him from breaking open the treas- 
ury, and from converting the public money to his own use, he 
was highly irritated, insomuch that when Metellus, 's" as a last 
resource, placed himself before the door of the ca,sar robs the trea- 
treasury, Caesar threatened him with immediate Sd^^.s^'o^the tr^ 
death, and was disposed to have made this murder, bunitian office. 
had Metellus persisted in his resistance, the prelude to a general 
massacre. Thus, within the space of three months, the man who 
had attacked his country, under pretence of revenging the insults 
offered to the tribunitian power, was himself guilty of a most vio- 
lent outrage upon that power, when exercised in as just a cause 
as could on any occasion have required its protection. But by 

186 Caesar, I. 32. isg Ad Atticum, X. epist. I. 

18T I. 33. . 19" Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. IV. 

188 In Ca3sare, 35. Plutarch, in Cssare, 35. 



246 C^SAR TAKES SICILY AND SARDINIA. 

this act of violence Csesar lost much of his popularity, even with 
the lowest of the people •,'^^ and finding that he was doing him- 
self nothing but mischief by his stay in Rome, he set out before 
the middle of April on his way to Spain, without venturing to 
deliver a speech to the people as he had before designed. He in- 
trusted the command of the capital itself to M. Lepidus ;^'^ that 
of the rest of Italy to M. Antonius ; C. Curio, as has been before 
mentioned, was to occupy Sicily ; Q.- Yalerius Orca, Sardinia; 
and C. Antonius, Illyricura. 

Sicily and Sardinia were won with little difficulty. The 
He gains possession first of thosc provlnccs had been assigned by the 
dinil!'^''^ ^" ^^^' senate to M. Cato on the first commencement of the 
rebellion ; but he, judging himself more fitted for civil than for 
military employments, had declined to accept the command, '^^ so 
long as there was any prospect of the speedy re-establishment of 
the government at Rome. When this became desperate, he went 
over to Sicily, and exerted himself with great vigour in building 
ships, in refitting such as he found in the island, and in levying 
soldiers, not only from among the Sicilians, but from the inhab- 
itants of the opposite coast of Italy. These preparations, however, 
were in a very imperfect state, when he received the tidings of 
Curio's approach with an army of three legions ; the troops 
being, indeed, actually carried over into Sicily by C. Asinius Pol- 
lio, before Curio had joined them to assume the command. ^'^ 
Cato appears to have entered into the war with the same feelings 
that are ascribed to our own Lord Falkland, under circumstances 
partly similar : he deeply regretted the bloodshed which must at- 
tend the victory of either party, and he justly estimated the wick- 
edness of fringing the miseries of war on the peaceable inhab- 
itants of a country without any reasonable prospect of success. 
Accordingly, finding himself unable to maintain possession of the 
island, '^^ he quitted Syracuse on the twenty-fourth of April, and 
went to join Pompey and the army of the commonwealth in 
Greece. Curio thus became master of Sicily without opposition, 
and Q. Valerius Orca was equally fortimate in Sardinia ; for M. 
Cotta,'^^ to whom the senate had intrusted the care of that pro- 
vince, finding the inhabitants strongly disposed to submit to 
Csesar, and being driven out of Caralis, one of the chief towns in, 
the island, by the unassisted eftbrts of the citizens themselves, de- 
spaired of resisting Caesar's officer, and abandoning Sardinia, 
withdrew into Africa, where the cause of the commonwealth 
seemed to wear a more promisitig appearance. 

191 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. IV. '9* Plutarch, in Catone, 53. Appian, 
Ad Familiares, Vlll. epist. XVI. II. 40. 

192 Plutarch, in Antonio, 6. Appian, de '95 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. XVI. 
Bell. Civili, II. 41. Caesar, I. 30. Plutarch, in Catone, 53. 

193 Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. XV. i96 Ctesar, I. 30. Cicero, ad Atticum, 
Cffisar, I. 30. X. epist. XVI. 



THE ARMY OP THE COMMONWEALTH IN SPAIN. 347 

We must now follow the steps of Caesar towards Spain. On 
his arrival in Transalpine Gaul, he found that the He marches into 
citizens of Massilia refused to admit him within MSJrefuaesto 
their walls,'" and were making preparations to tutEy.'^^® ^^''^ 
stand a siege. Massilia, a Greek colony, founded by the lonians of 
Phocsea, when Ionia was first conquered by the Persians in the 
reign of the elder Cyrus, had been for many years the ally of 
Rome, and had attained to a considerable height of power and pros- 
perity. Its government deemed it inconsistent with their relations 
with Rome to support a rebel general, whatever might have been 
the success of his rebellion ; and L. Domitius, whom Caesar had 
taken prisoner and dismissed at Corfinium, having been since 
busily employed in collecting a squadron of light vessels and 
manning them with his slaves and dependents from his estates 
near Cosa in. Etruria, was expected soon in Transalpine Gaul, the 
command of which had been conferred on him by the senate, 
as we have before mentioned. According to Caesar's account, the 
Massilians, after making professions of perfect neutrality, received 
Domitius into their city as soon as his squadron arrived, and 
placed all their resources at his disposal : but it seems more likely 
that Caesar had insisted on their acknowledging his authority, 
and from the moment they had refused to do so had already re- 
garded them as enemies, so that their reception of Domitius was 
rendered unavoidable. Be this as it may, their siege of MassiUa 
hostility to Caesar soon assumed a decided shape, commenced. 
and he laid siege to their city with three legions. About a month 
was employed in the construction of a fleet of twelve ships of war 
by his orders in the neighbouring port of Arelate, and in prepar- 
ing towers and other works for the attack of the walls, after which 
he gave the command of the army to C. Trebonius, and of the 
fleet to Decimus Brutus (both of them afterwards in the number 
of his assassins), and pursued his own course, according to his; 
original intention, into Spain. 

Spain was at this time held by three of Pompey's lieutenants :- 
L. Afranius, who had been consul with Q,. Metellus state ofthe army of 
Celer in the year 693 ; M. Petreius, a veteran ofiicer, In Ipai?."""""''^''^ 
who, as lieutenant of the consul C. Antonius, had commanded the 
forces of the commonwealth in the battle in which L. Catiline was 
defeated and killed in the year 691 ; and M. Terentius Varro, a man 
more distinguished as a writer and philosopher than as a general. 
Their united force is stated by Csesar to have amounted to seven 
legions; ^3^ two of which, under M. Varro, were occupying the 
southern part of Spain, while Afranius and Petreius, with the re- 
maining five, and a numerous body of Spanish auxiliaries, had 
stationed themselves on the north of the Ebro, and had fixed: 

'" Caesar, I. 34, et seq. '98 Cjesar, I. 38. 

17 



248 CAMPAIGN ON THE SICORIS. 

their head-quarters at Ilerda on the Sicoris. Caesar had ah-eady 
sent C. Fabius, his heutenant, with four legions across the Pyre- 
nees, and others were ordered to follow without delay. A con- 
siderable auxiliary force of Gauls also accompanied the army, 
and the Gaulish cavalry in particular is said to have been both 
numerous and excellent. Meantime, a report was current that 
Pompey, with all his own army, was on his way to Spain to join 
his lieutenants ; and the apprehension of so formidable an acces- 
sion, to the strength of the enemy, induced Csesar to attempt to 
bind most closely the attachment of his own soldiers to himself. 
For this purpose he borrowed money of the military tribunes and 
centurions, and with this fund he was enabled to to make a do- 
nation to the troops ; a step by which he not only conciliated the 
soldiers, but secured the fidelity of the officers, whose only hope 
of being repaid rested in the victory of their general. 

It is' not easy to ascertain the precise amount of the numbers 
cssar anives in of CsBsar's army, when he himself arrived to take 
Spain. the command. They were at least equal to those 

of the enemy in regular infantry, and Ceesar was expecting addi- 
tional reinforcements of Gauls, which might place his auxiliary 
force on a level with that of his opponents. However, Afranius 
and Petreius were unwilling to risk a general action with the 
veteran soldiers of Caesar's legions ; and they resolved rather to 
protract the contest, being abundantly provided with resources, 
and being in a position which they had themselves chosen as the 
seat of war. The town of Ilerda was situated on the right bank 
of the Sicoris, and their army was encamped before it ; so that 
Caisar had pitched his camp on the same side of the river, pre- 
serving also his communications with the left bank by means of 
two bridges, '^» distant nearly four miles from each other, which 
had been constructed at points higher up the Sicoris. The 
country which he could command on the right bank was confined 
within narrow limits by the river Cinga, which flows into the 
• Sicoris just above its confluence with the Ebro, and whose course 
• „. .ho was distant from Ilerda something less than thirty 

Campaign on the . , . -P ^ » _r 

Sicoris. miles. This district was soon exhausted ; as An-a- 

nius had already conveyed the greatest part of the corn which he 
could find in it into Ilerda, and Caesar's troops had quickly con- 
sumed whatever had not been thus pre-occupied. But, as large 
convo3''s of provisions were on their M^ay from Gaul and Italy, as 
some of the more distant Spanish tribes had also engaged to send 
supplies, and as Caesar's own plundering parties made frequent 
excursions on the left bank of the Sicoris, the support of the army 
seemed likely to be well secured.""" It happened, however, that 

us Cfflsar, I. 40. 200 Caesar, I. 48. 



CESAR'S CAVALRY ANNOY THE ENEMY. 249 

for Bome days there fell an unusual quantity of Distress ofcaesarqw- 
rain, which combined with the melting of the snow |,"/^^g"J,«rid|ls™by°a 
on the mountains to produce a great and sudden ^°°^- 
flood, insomuch that both Caesar's bridges were blown up in the 
course of the same day. Nor did the waters soon abate ; but 
continued so high as to baffle all attempts at repairing the bridges, 
■and effectually to cut off all intercourse with the opposite bank of 
the river. Under these circumstances, Caesar's foraging parties 
on the left bank were unable to rejoin the army, and several large 
convoys of provisions, which had reached the Sicoris, found them- 
selves suddenly intercepted. The army of the commonwealth,- 
meantime, still preserved its communications uninterrupted, by 
means of the bridge at Ilerda; and in this manner, Afranius, 
hearing of the detention of Caesar's convoys, crossed the river with 
three legions and all his cavalry, and set out by night in the hope 
of surprising them. According to Caesar's account, '^"^ the gallant 
resistance of some Gaulish horse enabled the greater part of the 
convoys to effect their escape to the higher grounds ; some bag- 
gage, however, was taken, and the prospect of the safe arrival of 
the rest was rendered extremely doubtful. Great distress began 
to be felt in Caesar's army ; the price of corn rose to an extrava- 
gant height j the strength and spirits of the soldiers were affected 
by the necessary reduction in their allowance of food ; whilst the 
legions of Afranius were abundantly supplied with every thing, 
and the generals themselves, full of confidence in their final suc- 
cess, transmitted to Rome the most favourable reports of the state 
of their affairs, and represented, perhaps with some exaggeration, 
the distress of the enemy. 

Under these circumstances, Caesar ordered his men to make a 
great number of boats, of a construction which, he His army is carried 
tells us, he had learnt in Britain ; and which may bolts"'''"''^""''^''' 
still be seen in the coracles used by the descendants of the Britons 
in the rivers and mountain lakes of Wales. A light frame or 
skeleton of wood was filled up with wicker work, and then 
covered over on the outside with hides.^"^ The boats thus formed 
were transported in wagons about twenty miles up the river by 
night, and, being then put into the water, carried over a detach- 
ment of troops immediately, who occupied a hill close to the bank. 
One entire legion was then ferried across in the same manner ; 
and, the work being carried on at once from both banks, a new 
bridge was completed in two days. The dispersed convoys and 
the foraging parties, which had been detained on the left bank, 
now joined the army; and a large proportion of ^he army of the com- 
Caesar's cavalry, crossing the river as soon as the {^""cL'^swi's tSpenor 
bridge was finished, attacked some of the foragers <=avairy. 

201 Caesar, I. 51. 202 Caesar, I. 54. 



250 THE GENERALS RETREAT TOWARDS THE EBRO. 

of the enemy with great success, defeated their covering party of 
hght troops, and returned to their camp on the right bank, bring- 
ing with them a very considerable booty. Indeed. Csesar's cavalry 
was so decidedly superior to that of Afranius, that, as soon as he 
had re-estabhshed his communication with the opposite bank of 
the Sicoris, he was enabled to retaliate on his antagonists the evils 
which had lately pressed upon himself. He commanded the 
countiy so as to prevent them from getting any provisions by 
foraging ; and several of the Spanish tribes now thought it expe- 
dient to espouse his cause, and brought him abundant supplies of 
corn. The distance of his new bridge from his camp was still an 
inconvenience ; to remedy which he proposed to render the Sicoris 
fordable at a point nearer to his present station, by drawing off a 
part of its waters into several small cuts, as the floods had, proba- 
The generals of the bly, by tMs time Considerably abated. When he 
B^^oposf to^rlti^e ^ad made some progress in this work, the enemy's 
behind the Ebro. geucrals thought it expedient to change entirely their 
plan of operations. They resolved to retire behind the Ebro f^^ 
and, relying on the affection of those Celtiberian tribes, which had 
received signal favours from Pompey in return for their assistance 
in his contest with Sertorius, they expected to draw from them 
such reinforcements of cavalry as might enable them to oppose 
Csesar on equal terms, and to protract the war with advantage in 
a friendly country, till the return of winter. On the other hand, 
delay would be to Caesar hardly less fatal than defeat. Neither 
the character nor the resources of his lieutenant, M. Antonius, Avere 
calculated to insure his possession of Italy, if Cassar should be 
long detained in Spain ; and the aristocracy might rally a suffi- 
cient force in Rome and in Italy to shake off the military usurpa- 
tion by which it was enslaved, even without the aid of that for- 
midable fleet and army which the generals of the commonwealth 
had already assembled in Epirus. 

We must suppose that Afranius and Petreius had not calcu- 
lated on CcBsar's bringing with him into Spain a cavalry so deci- 
dedly superior to their own ; as otherwise, their choice of Ilerda, 
as the base of their operations, seems to have been originally un- 
wise. The country, for some miles on every side of that town, is 
a plain, on which cavalry can act with advantage ; and, accord- 
ingly, we find that, as soon as Caesar had remedied the accidental 
inconvenience produced by the loss of his bridges, the enemy were 
unable to cope with him, and were driven to abandon the ground 
on which they had at first proposed to carry on the campaign. 
Measures were taken by Afranius and Petreius to secure their 
retreat. A bridge of boats was begun to be thrown across the 
Ebro, near the point of its confluence with the Sicoris, and at the 

»» Cffisar, I. 61. 



THEY ARE PURSUED BY C^SAR. 55 j 

distance of something less than twenty miles from their present 
camp f°^ all the small craft on the river were secured and brought 
together on this spot ; and two legions of their array crossed at 
once from Ilerda to the left bank of the Sicoris, and there formed 
a camp. At length, when they were informed that Cassar's arti- 
ficial cuts had nearly rendered the river fordable for They retreat from 
infantry, they put their whole force in motion, and Ebro^'""'" ^^^ 
leaving only a small garrison in Ilerda, they transported all their 
troops to the opposite bank, and effected their junction with the 
two legions which, as we have mentioned, they had sent across 
before. From this point their course was through the plain of 
Ilerda, descending the left bank of the Sicoris for several miles ; 
after which they would meet with a tract of wild and mountain- 
ous country extending as far as the Ebro. If then they could 
once reach the mountains, their retreat was accomplished, for the 
passes might be easily secured so as to check the pursuit of an 
enemy ; and whilst they had only to march on in a straight line, 
Csesar's infantry was still detained on the right bank of the river ; 
and if he should attempt to go round by his own bridge, the 
circuit, which he would be thus obliged to perform, would render 
his chance of overtaking them before they had passed the plain 
utterly desperate. With these prospects, Afranius and Petreius 
commenced their march a little before day-break. 

It appears, however, that Csesar had anticipated their pur- 
pose, and had already sent his whole cavalry They are pursued by 
across the river,""* to be prepared to harass and im- '^*^^- 
pede their progress from the instant that they should quit their 
camp. This service was performed very eifectually ; the army 
of the commonwealth having no horse or light troops of any de- 
scription that could at all repel the annoyance. Meantime, as 
soon as it was day, Caesar's infantry, seeing what was passing on 
the opposite side of the river, were impatient to join in the pur- 
suit ; and their general, availing himself of their ardour, ventured 
to ford the Sicoris with his whole army, leaving behind only one 
legion to guard his camp, together with those soldiers from the 
other legions whose bodily strength or courage seemed unequal to 
the enterprise. When he had gained the left bank, he pressed 
his march with such rapidity, that, although he had crossed the 
river some distance above Ilerda, and some delay had taken place 
in effecting the passage, he yet came up with the enemy three or 
four hours before sunset.""^ Afranius halted on a rising ground 
and offered battle ; Cassar halted too, not to fight, but to give his 
soldiers some refreshment; and when Afranius again attempted 
to continue his retreat, he experienced a renewal of the same an- 

20* Caesar, I. 61. 206 Caesar, 1.64. 

SOS Caesar, I. 63. 



252 THEIR RETREAT CUT OFF. 

noyance as before from Csesar's irresistible cavalry. Wearied 
with a long day of marching in retreat, and of fighting at con- 
tinual disadvantage, the army of the commonwealth halted, and 
formed their camp for the night, when they were now within 
five miles of those friendly mountains, to reach which was cer- 
tain safety. 

About midnight Afranius and Petreius prepared in silence to 
recommence their march j^" but some of their men having ven- 
tured too far to get water, were taken by Caesar's cavalry, and 
their intention was thus discovered. Caesar ordered the alarm to 
be instantly sounded, and the call to be given to his soldiers to 
commence the pursuit. The camps were so near to one another^ 
that this note of preparation was clearly heard by the enemy's 
army, and the generals, dreading the confusion of a night en- 
gagement, while encumbered with their baggage on the march, 
changed their purpose, and kept their troops in their quarters. 
On the following day parties were sent out on both sides to recon- 
noitre the nature of the ground over which the retreat was to be 
continued ; and when the report was received, Afranius and Pe- 
treius resolved to set out on the following morning, not doubting 
but that tbey should be able to gain the mountains, even if it 
were at the price of some partial losses. Caesar also formed his 
plan ; and in pursuance of it he put his army in motion at the 
very earliest dawn of the succeeding day, and leaving his heavy 
baggage in his camp, set out apparently in the opposite direction 
from that which led to the mountains, following no road, but 
making the best of his way across the country. By a fatal and 
incomprehensible infatuation, Afranius and Petreius lost some ir- 
retrievable moments in congratulating themselves on the defeat of 
their enemy's plans, imagining that, having advanced beyond his 
resources, he was obliged to abandon the pursuit from want of 
provisions. They lingered in their camp^"^ till they saw the di- 
rection of this fancied retreat suddenly changed, and perceived 
Caesar's army wheel round to the right, and push forward with 
the utmost speed to reach the mountains, and intercept their es- 
cape. Then perceiving their danger, every man at once ran to 
arms, and the army resumed its march with redoubled rapidity, 
striving to disappoint Caesar's designs, and to gain their place of 
safety before they were for ever precluded from attaining it. 

Their efforts, however, were fiuitless.'^''^ They where harass- 
ed by Caesar's cavalry, and this impediment more than counter- 
balanced the natural difficulties of ground with which Caesar him- 
self had to struggle. He reached the mountains first, and there 
drew out his army on a commanding ridge, in front 
of his baffled enemy. Afranius halted with his 

^■' Cffisar, I. 66. "oo Csesar, T. 70. 72. 

^ Caesar, I. 69. 



THEY ARE OBLIGED TO SURRENDER. 



253 



troops on a hill which rose in the outskirts of the mountain region, 
and made one last effort to secure, with his light troops, the highest 
point in the chain before him, hoping, if the attempt succeeded, 
to carry his whole army thither, and still to retreat over the high 
grounds, though by a somewhat different course from that which 
he had originally designed. But he saw the whole detachment 
which he had sent on this service cut to pieces before his eyes by 
Caesar's cavalry, and his troops, dispirited by repeated disappoint- 
ments, seemed hardly able to resist an attack, if Caesar should 
now try to finish the campaign by a single battle. Caesar, how- 
ever, preferred a surer and more bloodless victory ; and purposely 
so altered the disposition of his troops as to allow Afranius to fall 
back to his camp without fear of interruption. The hill on which 
the army of the commonwealth was now posted, was untenable 
from its want of water ; and no better prospect presented itself 
than to return to the camp which they had left in the morning. 
Accordingly they did so ; while Csesar, having carefully occupied 
every pass in the mountains which led to the Ebro, again moved 
towards his enemy, and pitched his camp for the night as near to 
theirs as possible. 

The issue of the campaign was now clearly decided, and the 
remaining faint struggles made by Afranius and They endeavour to 

-i-»,- . , ij.i-j7j.j i. • return to Ilerda, but 

Petrems to protract then* fate do not requu'e a very are obliged to sur- 
minute detail. They^ attempted to retreat to Ilerda, blnded.*^" 
where they had left some supplies of corn,2'° but being harassed, 
as before, by Caesar's cavalry, their progress was continually im- 
peded, their parties sent out to get water were cut off, and at last, 
when they remained in their camp as if wearied with the unceas- 
ing annoyance to which they were exposed on their march, 
Caesar prepared to surround them with a line of circumvallation, 
and thus force them to surrender at discretion from mere famine. 
Before matters had come to this extremity, the soldiers on both 
sides had, on one occasion, begun to communicate with each 
other ; and those of Afranius, availing themselves of the temporary 
absence of their generals from the camp, proposed to submit to 
Caesar, if he would engage to spare the lives of their commanders. 
So far had this unauthorized negotiation proceeded, that several 
officers and soldiers from either army passed without fear into the 
opposite camp ; and the Spanish chiefs in particular, whom 
Afranius kept with him as hostages for the fidelity of their tribes, 
were eager to commend themselves to the protection of the con- 
queror. But Afranius and Petreius being informed of the subject 
in agitation, hastened back to their camp ; and Petreius, attended 
by some troops especially attached to his person, appeared sudden- 
ly on the rampart, broke off the conferences between the soldiers, 

2"^ Cajsar, I. 73—84, 



254 SURRENDER OP M. VARRO. 

drove away Caesar's men, and seized and put to the sword all of 
them whom he could find within his own lines. No doubt every 
superior officer in Caesar's army might have been executed as a 
traitor and rebel ; but justice itself, when not supported by adequate 
power, becomes useless cruelty ; and the conduct of Petreius on this 
occasion, besides the barbarity of such an indiscriminate slaughter 
of defenceless men, was merely likely to provoke a victorious 
enemy to a severe retaliation. When, therefore, the army of the 
commonwealth was reduced to the last extremity, and the gene- 
rals, if we may believe Caesar, threw themselves entirely on his 
mercy,^" he reproached them bitterly for their cruelty to his sol- 
diers, and represented this conduct as perfectly agreeable to the 
general treatment which he had received from the partisans of 
Pompey ; but he was too politic to follow their example, and agreed 
to spare them and their troops on the condition of their quitting 
Spain and disbanding their army. This last stipulation was 
most welcome to the vanquished soldiers, who thus unexpectedly 
obtained their release from service at the hands of their enemy. 
The natives of Spain were dismissed immediately ; the rest of the 
troops were marched through Gaul to the frontiers of Italy, re- 
ceiving rations from Caesar on their way, and when they arrived 
at the river Yar, they also were all disbanded. Afranius and Pe- 
treius repaired to Greece^ and joined the army of Pompey. 

M. Yarro still remained in arms in the south of Spain, '^'^ and 
Surrender of M. var- ou rcceiviug tidiugs of the issuc of the campaign 
the TOmmonweaUhfn ^^^ ^hc Sicorls, hc iutcuded to shut himself up with 
Spain. iiis amiy of two legions in the island of Gades. more 

familiar to our ears under its present appellation of the Isle of 
Leon. Here he had collected a fleet and considerable magazines 
of corn, and had also raised a large sum of money, partly by forced 
contributions from the Roman citizens resident in the province, 
and partly by seizing the treasures and sacred ornaments from 
the famous temple of Hercules, in the neighbourhood of the town. 
Caesar, with his usual activity, hastened to extinguish these last 
remains of hostility in Spain,'" ^ and having sent before him two 
legions, imder the command of Q,. Cassius, he followed himself 
with six hundred horse, issuing at the same time a proclamation, 
by which the magistrates and chief men of all the towns of the 
province were required to meet him on a certain day at Corduba. 
The fame of his victory over Afranius and Petreius had produced 
so general an impression in his favour, that his proclamation was 
every where obeyed, and every town took an active part in his 
cause. The people of Gades declared for Caesar, and expelled 
from their city the officer to whom Yarro had intrusted the com- 

'" Cffisar, I. 84—87. "=' Cnesar, II. 19—21. 

"« Cffisar, II. 17. 



CiESAR IS APPOINTED DICTATOR. 255 

mand ; and one of the two Roman legions that composed Yarro's 
army deserted him openly, and marched away to Hispalis. Upon 
this Varro offered to surrender his remaining legion, together with 
the fleet, corn, and money that he had collected for the war. 
Caesar received his submission at Corduba, where he found the 
principal individuals of the province, both Romans and Spaniards, 
assembled according to his orders. He thanked them for the zeal 
which they had shown in his cause, and remitted to the Roman 
citizens among them the contributions which Varro had demand- 
ed. He thence proceeded to Gades, where he ordered the treasures 
taken from the temple of Hercules to be restored ; and having left 
Q,. Cassius, with four legions, to command the province, he em- 
barked on board the fleet which Varro had just surrendered to him, 
and arrived after a short passage at Tarraco. Here he received 
a number of deputations from the different towns of ^jj ^^^^ submits to 
the north of Spain, and having bestowed some hon- ^'*=="'- 
ours on such states and individuals as had most assisted him in 
his late campaign, he set out from Tarraco by land, and returned 
to that part of his army which he had left under 

/~i rn 1 • 1 1 • j^i • i7 TIT •!• He returns to Massilia. 

C. Trebonms, employed m the siege oi Massilia. 

It is said that the complete conquest of Spain was effected in forty 

days from the period of his first opening the campaign on the 

Sicoris.*^^* 

The citizens of Massilia were by this time reduced to the last 
extremity,'^'* their naval force having been totally 

-If T -1 T-w • x-» . •1111 1 Surrender of Massilia. 

defeated by Decimus Brutus, a considerable breach 
having been made in their walls, and they themselves suffering 
the combined evils of scanty sustenance and disease. Accord- 
ingly, on Caesar's arrival before the town, they offered to surrender 
to him, L. Domitius having already effected his escape by sea ; 
and their submission was so far accepted, that their city was pre- 
served from plunder, and was even allowed to retain its liberty ; 
but they were obliged to surrender all the arms and military 
engines in their arsenals, to give up all their ships, to pay to Cae- 
sar all the money in their treasury, and at a subsequent period to 
forfeit most of the dominion which they possessed beyond their 
own walls. Before the end of the siege, Caesar re- ceesar is appointed 
ceived intelligence from Rome that he had been dictator. 
appointed dictator by M. Lepidus the praetor, in pursuance of a 
decree of the people. Nothing could be more illegal than such 
an appointment, made as it was without the authority of the sen- 
ate, or the nomination of either of the consuls ; ^'^ but it appears 
that the absence of the chief magistrates of the commonwealth 
had somewhat embarrassed Caesar's party, and that they did not 

«" Caesar, II. 32. «'6 Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 48. 

.'^i* Ccesar, II. 22. Dion Cassius, XLI. 
165. 



256 STATE OP ITALY DURING THE 

know how to procure his election as consul for the year following, 
without this previous measure of conferring on him the dictator- 
ship, that he might be enabled to preside at the comitia. This 
could not be done by Lepidus,'^"' who was only praetor, and far 
less by any inferior officer : there was no alternative, therefore, 
but to appoint Caesar dictator, or to allow the year to expire with- 
out proceeding to any election ; and then, when the present con- 
suls should have resigned their power, to let the comitia be held, 
as was usual in such cases by an interrex. But Caesar now 
being invested with the title, at least, of a lawful magistrate, set 
out for Rome, as soon as Massiha had surrendered, in order to 
exercise his power in the civil government with more eflect than 
during his late visit to the capital on his way from Brundisium to 
Mutiny of Caesar's Spalu. Ho was uncxpectcdly detained, however, 
troops at piacentia. at Placcutia, by a mutiny which broke out in a 
part of his army,^'^ owing, as it is said, to the disappointment of 
the soldiers in not being gratified, as they had hoped, with the 
plunder of Italy. Caesar's ability displayed itself on this occasion 
to great advantage. He addressed the mutinous troops in the 
firmest tone ; and as they professed to wish to gain their dis- 
charge, he instantly dismissed from his service one entire legion, 
and punished with c Jsath the principal authors of the mutiny ; 
after which, finding the legion most anxious to be again received 
into favour, he consented to revoke its punishment, and to con- 
tinue it in his service. In this manner, like Cromwell on a simi- 
lar occasion, he quelled the most formidable danger that could 
threaten him, by appearing unmoved by it ; and whilst he was 
trampling on all laws himself, gave a lesson to his followers that 
they were not to be indulged with an equal license. From Pia- 
centia he tlien proceeded to Rome, and entered on the dictator- 
ship ; but not choosing at present to hold this unpopular title 
longer than was necessary, he held the comitia for the election of 
consuls, and having procured his own nomination, together with 
that of P. Servilius Isauricus, he laid down his office of dictator 
in eleven days after he had begun to exercise it.^i^ 

But within this short space of time there were not a few im- 
state of Italy .luring portaut subjccts wliicli claimcd his attention. When 
c^vu'ww?''""'^""' he had set out for Spain some months before, he 
left the command of Italy, as has been already mentioned, to M. 
Antonius. A rebel general in this manner subjected the first 
country in the empire to the absolute control of one of the vilest 
of his rebel officers. Antonius acted on no other authority than 
Caesar's commission ; but this empowered him to prevent any 
one from leaving Italy,'^'''' and to conduct himself as the master of 

«" Cicero, ad Atticum, IX. epist. IX. 219 Ceesar, III. 2. 

*" Dion Cassius, XLI. 165. Suetonius, 2^0 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist, X. 
inCffisare, 69. XVI. Philippic II. 23. 



FIRST YEAR OP THE CIVIL WAR. 357 

a conquered province. He travelled about, accompanied at once 
by his mistress, who was carried in an open litter, by his wife, 
and by his mother, and attended by a train of men and women 
of the most abandoned description. He obliged the several towns 
through which he passed to send out deputations to meet him, and 
to offer complimentary addresses, in which his mistress, who was 
by profession an inferior actress, was saluted with the name of 
Volumnia, a name consecrated in the traditions of Rome as hav- 
ing been that of the wife or mother of Coriolanus. On other 
occasions, when the magistrates of some of the most considerable 
cities were summoned to attend him,*^^' he treated them Avith 
studied insult, because their towns had incurred Ccesar's displeas- 
ure from their disinclination to his cause. This behaviour tended 
greatly to alienate the affections of the people of Italy, and to 
make them anticipate the evils likely to follow from the final vic- 
tory of a party whose adherents already so boldly defied and 
insulted public opinion. Even the dispositions of the army began 
to waver ; and as far as we can learn from some hints in Cicero's 
letters to Atticus,-^^ there were some of Caesar's officers who were 
already disgusted with the party which they had chosen, and 
who secretly fomented the discontent of the soldiers. The cen- 
turions of three cohorts, posted at Pompeii, came to Cicero^^s 
while he was residing at his villa in that neighbourhood, and of- 
fered to place themselves, their soldiers, and the town which they 
occupied, at his disposal. He was not disposed to commit him- 
self by accepting their offer ; but it shows how fair a prospect 
Pompey would have had of regaining Italy, if he had availed 
himself of Csesar's absence to make a descent upon it. Mean- 
while the minds of men in general were kept in a continual fer- 
ment. We have seen, on former occasions, that the number of 
debtors at Rome, unable or unwilling to satisfy their creditors, 
was usually very considerable ; and as the habits of the times be- 
came more expensive, it was likely to be perpetually increasing. 
The present distracted state of Italy contributed to aggravate the 
difficulties of persons of this description. Money, it appears, had 
risen greatly in value,^'^^ partly perhaps from the sums taken out 
of circulation by the many wealthy individuals who followed Pom- 
pey into Greece ; partly from the great demand for it to maintain 
such large armies as were now on foot in different parts of the 
empire ; and partly, we may suppose, from the practice of hoard- 
ing, which is always common amongst a large proportion of the 
community, in times of apprehended distress and danger. On 
the other hand, landed property was as naturally depreciated, for 
no one liked to purchase that which might soon be wrested from 

221 Cicero, ad Atticum, X; epist. XIII. 223 Cicero, ad Atticuin,X.epist. XVI. 

222 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. XII. 224 Caesar, III. 1. Dion Cassius, XLI. 
XIV. XV. XVI. 170,171. 



258 CiESAR'S REGULATIONS IN HIS DICTATORSHIP. 

him to furnish settlements for the veteran soldiers of the party 
which might finally prove victorious. In this manner a debtor 
could neither readily raise money by the sale of his estates to 
discharge the principal of his debt, nor could he easily find 
means to pay the interest, which in itself was a great and now a 
permanent burden. Many, therefore, were looking forward with 
hope to a total revolution, by which all debts would at once be 
cancelled ; many derived encouragement from the assurance of 
Antonius,225 that all exiles would soon be allowed to return to 
their country : while others again were anticipating with horror 
a regular system of proscription and massacre whenever Caesar 
should return from Spain. His arrival, invested as he was 
with the power of dictator, was thus viewed on all sides 
with eagerness and anxiety ; and men watched to see the 
first measures of his government, by which they might judge 
whether he intended to imitate Sylla or Catiline ; whether he felt 
himself strong enough to disclaim, as a tyrant, the principles 
which he had favoured as a demagogue ; or whether he still pro- 
posed to tread consistently in the steps of his early life, and to 
uphold the needy, the extravagant, and the licentious, in their 
several courses of fraud, and dissipation, and profligacy. 

But CaBsar knew that no government can sport with the rights 
Caesar's regulations in ^f property without slukiug luto wcakuoss and 
his dictatorship. coutcmpt. He was obliged, therefore, to uphold 
the cause of the creditoi-, and to give no countenance to those who 
called for an entire abolition of all debts ; but yet, wishing to re- 
lieve the debtor he ordered that certain commissioners should be 
appointed to estimate the property of an insolvent,^^® and to oblige 
the creditor to receive it in payment at the price which it would 
have borne before the war. It is added, by Suetonius,^''^ that he 
caused all sums, previously paid as interest, to be deducted from 
the principal of the debt ; by which regulation, together with the 
preceding one, the creditor sustained, on the whole, a loss of 
twenty-five per cent. In his next measure, the dictator was en- 
abled to indulge his inclinations with less restraint. We have 
already mentioned the improvements introduced in the laws 
against bribery and other olfences during Pompey's last consul- 
ship ; and that several individuals were tried and banished under 
the provisions of his acts. Caesar now procured a decree of the 
people, reversing all the sentences passed at that time,"'*^ and al- 
lowing all who had been sufferers from them to return to their 
country ; alleging, that an undue influence had been exercised 
against them by the presence of Pompey's military force in the 
city during their trials. But to show the real motives by which 

225 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. XIII. 227 In Csesare, 42. 
22« Caesar, III. 1. 228 Caesar, III. I. 



CAMPAIGN OP CURIO IN AFRICA. 359 

he was actuated, he excepted Milo from the benefit of this decree,^^' 
because he was well known to be an enemy to the popular party ; 
although no one had been condemned at the same period against 
whom Pompey had testified a stronger feeling of dislike. It 
should be observed, too, that the language of Cicero, on several 
occasions, implies a far more general restoration of exiles on this 
occasion, than Caesar or his partisans have thought proper to ac- 
knowledge f^° that Dion Cassius, Appian, and Suetonius agree in 
asserting, distinctly, the same thing ; and that Suetonius adds 
further,^^^ that all thpse who had been degraded by the censors, 
were in like manner restored to their former rank. The object of 
this last step was probably to gratify those individuals whom 
Appius Claudius had lately disgraced in his censorship, and who 
at that very time threw themselves into the arms of Caesar, in the 
hope of obtaining, through him, the recovery of their dignity. 
When he had thus rewarded his followers, and en- Se leaves Rome and 

J J, i-i7iixi r 1 proceeds to Brundi- 

deavoured to gratiiy that class 01 persons who were sium, from which he 

. T J J. J. ^ • •J.^ J. J.1 r crosses overtoGreece. 

most disposed to support him, without greatly 01- u. c. 705. 
fending, the possessors of property, he resigned the dictatorship, as 
has been already mentioned, and set out for Brundisium. Here 
his army had been ordered to assemble ; and the troops which had 
returned from Gaul and Spain, together with those which he had 
raised in Italy, formed, on the whole, a force of no fewer than 
twelve legions.^^2 Some of these, however, were hardly more 
than skeletons, owing to their losses in former campaigns, which 
had not been yet made up, and to the effects of sickness, produced 
by the sudden change which many of the men had experienced 
from the climate of Spain and Gaul, to the influence of an autumn 
in Apulia ; nor had he ships to enable him at once to transport 
into Greece so considerable an army. According to his own state- 
ment, the seven legions, which he at first proposed to embark, 
amounted to no more than 20,000 infantry, and 600 cavalry, 
implying a diminution of their original numbers, for which his 
accounts of his former campaigns by no means would have pre- 
pared us ; and with this force he put to sea on the fourth of Janu- 
ary, and on the following day effected his landing in safety on 
the coast of Epirus. 

The advantages which Caesar had gained in Spain and Italy 
in the first year of the war, were somewhat check- campaign of cuno in 
ered by the ill success of his officers in Africa and v.^c^ioi. 
in Illyricum. We have already seen that C. Curio had occupied 
Sicily without opposition, M. Cato having thought his forces in- 

229 Dion Cassius, XLI. 170. Appian, 231 In C8Bsare,4], 
n. 48. 832 Cffisar, III. 2, 6. 

230 Ad Atticum, VII. epist. XL ; X. 
epist. XIII. XIV. 



260 



STATE OP AFRICA. 



sufficient to defend the island, and having accordingly abandoned 
it before the arrival of the enemy. Curio's original instructions 
from Caesar,'^^^ directed him to cross over into Africa so soon as 
he should have secured Sicily ; and this first object being already 
efiected, he set sail with two legions, about the middle of the 
summer, and reached the African coast in safety after a passage 
of two days and three nights. The Roman province of Africa 
was at this time held by P. Atius Yarns, an officer attached to the 
cause of Pompey, but little scrupulous, as it appears, of disregard- 
ing the forms of the commonwealth. He had been opposed to 
Cffisar in Italy, at the beginning of the rebellion ; and being then 
state of that doscrted by his soldiers, he left Italy, and hastened 

province. to Africa, ^^* a province which had formerly fallen 

to his lot to govern in the year that followed his preetorship. His 
old authority in that country was still favourably remembered ; 
and the late prsetor, C. Considius, having returned to Rome,'^^' and 
left the province under the care of his lieutenant, Q. Ligarius, till 
the appointment and arrival of a successor, P. Yarns thought 
proper to take the chief command upon himself, in order to secure 
so valuable a portion of the empire from the usurpation of Caesar. 
Ligarius was a quiet man, and was glad to be released from a 
situation of much difficulty and danger, so that he willingly al- 
lowed Yarns to supersede him. But soon after, L. Tubero^^® 
arrived off the coast, as the lawful successor of C. Considius, hav- 
ing received Africa as his province, amongst the various appoint- 
ments made by the authority of the senate just before they were 
compelled by Caesar to abandon the capital. It seems, however, 
that Tubero had no inclination to accept the office, and had only 
been persuaded to do so by the strong remonstrances of some of 
his friends, who represented his compliance as a duty which he 
owed to his country in these times of peril. A man thus reluc- 
tantly engaged in the cause, appeared to Yarns unfit to be trusted 
with a post of such importance as the command of Africa ; and 
thus availing himself of the license of civil wars, Yarns forcibly 
excluded the lawful officer of the commonwealth from taking 
possession of his province, and would not even suffer him to set 
his foot upon the shore. Tubero, thus repelled, showed the in- 
justice of the suspicions entertained against him, by repairing 
immediately to the standard of the commonwealth in Macedonia f^'' 
while the possession of Africa was to be disputed between two 
parties, both of whom were equally destitute of a legal title to it. 
Varus, however, professed to act as an officer of the common- 

233 Cffisar, de Bello Civili, I. 30 ; II. 23. =35 Cicero, pro Ligario, 2. 
231 Ca2sar, de Bello Civili, 1. 31, Cicero, ^36 Cjcero, pro Ligario, 7. Cajsar, I. 31. 
pro Ligario, 2. '^'^'' Cicero, pro Ligario, 8. 



DEFEAT OP CiESAR'S LIEUTENANTS. 261 

Wealth, and a partisan of Pompey ; and as such j^^a, king of Mawi- 
was strongly supported by Juba, king of Mauritania, ^fthkommo^^aig 
That prince was the son of Hiempsal,^^^ who, in « Africa. 
the civil wars between Marius and Sylla, had supported the party 
of the aristocracy, and had been rewarded for his services with 
the kingdom of Mauritania, when Pompey overthrew the united 
forces of Domitius and Hiarbas, and established the authority of 
Sylla in Africa. Juba, therefore, was disposed, naturally, to assist 
Pompey as the benefactor of his family ; and his assistance was 
given with double readiness, when he found that the army against 
which it was required was commanded by Curio ; for it seems 
that Curio,^^^ during his tribuneship, had proposed a law to declare 
the kingdom of Mauritania forfeited to the Roman people. The 
succour which Juba afforded was prompt and de- Defeat and death of 
cisive.^" Curio obtained at first some advantages ^""°- 
over the Roman forces under Varus ; but being too much elated 
by his success, he neglected the necessary precautions : and at- 
tacking the army which Juba brought up to the relief of Varus, 
without duly acquainting himself with its strength, he and the 
entire force under his command were cut to pieces. By this vic- 
tory the province of Africa remained under the authority of the 
commonwealth, and became afterwards the favourite refuge of the 
constitutional party, when the defeat of Pharsalia had ruined their 
cause in Greece and Asia. 

With regard to the operations in Illyricum, our information is 
exceedingly defective. It appears that Cassar, be- Defeatofcaesar'^iieu- 
fore his departure for Spain,^*' had left C. Anto- tenants m iiiyncum. 
nius, the brother of Marcus, with a certain naval and military 
force in Illyricum, which country was comprised, together with 
the Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, within the limits of his 
original province. Its occupation at the present moment was of 
considerable importance to Caesar's interests, because it might 
otherwise, during his absence in Spain, have afforded to Pompey 
a passage to the north of Italy, and thus have enabled him to 
cut off the resources which Cassar drew in abundance from the 
attachment of the people of that country. Reports, indeed, were 
prevalent at Rome as early as the month of April, that Pompey 
was actually making this attempt f^^ but his plans were of 
another kind, and his armaments were not yet in such a state of 
forwardness as to encourage him to act on the offensive. To the 
southward of Illyricum, the mouth of the Adriatic^^^ ^y^g guarded 
with a small squadron by P. Cornelius Dolabella, the son-in- law 

238 Dion Cassius, XLI. 172, edit. Leun- 2« Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 41. 
clav. Plutarch, in Pompeio, 12. Auctor ^42 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. VI. 
de Bello Africano, 56. 243 Cicero, ad Atticum, X. epist. VII. 

239 Cffisar, II. 25. Appian, II. 41. 
2« CEesar;iI. 36, et seq. 



262 PREPARATIONS OF POMPEY FOR WAR. 

of Cicero ; but like most others of the young nobility of bad 
character, engaged in the cause of Csesar. Inferior as Caesar 
was to his adversaries in naval means, he could only expect Do- 
labella to keep the sea for a time, till the fleets of the enemy 
should be brought together ; after which it became his business 
to preserve his ships with the utmost care, as Cassar was ill able 
to replace them, if they should be taken or destroyed. But 
.whether from Avant of caution on the part of Dolabella, or from 
any other cause, he was attacked on the eastern shore of the Adri- 
atic by the ships of the commonwealth, under M. Octavius and 
L. Scribonius Libo,'^'** and was defeated with the loss of his entire 
fleet. His disaster was only the prelude to another of greater 
magnitude ; for C. Antonius"^^ coming up in the hope of relieving 
him, was surrounded by the victorious forces of the enemy, who 
putting on shore a portion of their seamen, blockaded him by 
land and sea, till he was obliged to surrender himself prisoner 
with all the troops under his command. The soldiers were in- 
corporated with Pompey's army : and these successes tended, 
probably, to facilitate the levies which were now going on, in 
the name of the commonwealth, in Greece, and in the eastern 
provinces of the empire. 

It is now proper to notice more particularly the proceedings 
Preparations of Pom- of Pompcy siuco his arrival in Greece in the early 
pey for war. paj-f of ^j^q year 704. He found himself attended 

by both the consuls, and about two hundred senators,-^^ so that 
he might fairly consider himself as being supported by the au- 
thority of the commonwealth. For the present, indeed, almost 
all the magistrates of the republic were at his quarters ; but as 
their power Avould expire at the end of the year, and as it was 
impossible to observe the proper forms of election in any other 
place than at Rome, it was resolved that the present officers 
should be continued in their commands, with the titles of pro- 
consuls, proprastors, &c., by a decree of the senate. This ap- 
pears to have been perfectly consistent with the constitutional 
power of that order ; and a place was accordingly marked out at 

244 Flonis, IV. 2. Dion Cassius, XLI. very possibly have deserted to the enemy 

171. Suetonius, in Caesare, 36. Caesar, on this occasion, and might have carried 

III. 5. to them some useful information, the im- 

*** Florus, Dion Cassius, ubi supra, porlance of which Cagsar would gladly 

Livy, Epitome, CX. CsEsar asserts that exaggerate, so as to ascribe the loss of the 

Antonius was betrayed by one of his ofR- army chiefly, or entirely to this cause. — 

cere, T. Fulcio, who afterwards served in The treason of T. Fulcio, whatever it was, 

Pompey's army ; Caesar, III. 67. It has is not even hinted at by Florus, Suetonius, 

been a favourite resource with others be- the epitomizer of Livy, Appian, nor Dion 

sides Caesar to attribute their disasters to Cassius ; writers, none of whom can be 

treason ; but such statements, when resting called unfavourable to Caesar, and the two 

merely on the assertion of the vanquished latter of whom have rather a bias in his 

party, should be received with great sus- favour, 

picion. An officer in Antonius's army might 246 Dion Cassius, XLI. 173. 



STRENGTH OF POMPEY'S ARMY. 263 

Thessalonica, and duly consecrated by the augurs, The senate assemble. 
that the auspices might be taken with the usual atxhessaionica. 
solemnities, and that the senate might not assemble on profane 
ground ; a circumstance which would have violated all its acts. 
Meanwhile Pompey was busily employed in collecting troops and 
ships, and supplies of provisions from all quarters. Many of the 
petty princes and states of Asia Minor and the eastern coast of 
the Mediterranean, were indebted to him for their crowns or their, 
dominions during his long commands in that part of the empire, 
so that his private influence came powerfully in aid of the name 
of the Roman republic, in procuring their support, strength of pompey> 
He had under his immediate standard an army of ^™y- 
nine legions of Roman citizens,^*'' live of which he had brought 
with him from Italy, two had been raised by order of Lentulus 
in the Roman province of Asia, one was composed of the veteran 
soldiers who had settled in Crete and Macedonia after their term 
of service had expired, and one had been formed out of the sol- 
diers of two veteran legions which had been quartered in Sicily, 
With these was joined an auxiliary force of infantry which Pom- 
pey had lately raised in Greece ; and a reinforcement of two 
legions more was expected ere long to be added to the army, 
which Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, was to bring with him from 
his province in Syria. The cavalry is said to have amounted 
to seven thousand, but it seems to have consisted of the troops of 
so many different nations, that much time and a careful discipline 
must have been needed before such various elements could coa- 
lesce into one body. The light infantry were also numerous, but 
they, like the cavalry, were a motley force of Greeks, Cretans, 
Syrians, and natives of Pontus, whose steadiness was little to be 
trusted in the hour of difficulty. It is difficult to ascertain the 
real numbers of the whole army, because we know not whether 
the legions contained their full compliment of men, or whether 
some of them were not mere skeletons, which it was intended to 
fill up from time to time with new levies. But whatever was the 
numerical strength of Pompey's troops, they were so decidedly 
inferior in quality to those of the enemy, that their general, under 
present circumstances, could not venture to oppose them to Cae- 
sar's veterans in the open field. He was fully sensible, indeed, of 
their inferiority, and exerted himself to the utmost, during the in- 
terval of leisure that was afforded him, in improving their disci- 
pline, and training them incessantly in those military exercises 
which the nature of ancient warfare rendered so important.^^* 
Pompey himself took part in these exercises with all the spirit 
and activity of youth, and added at once to his own popularity 

2*7 Csesar, III. 4. 248 Plutarch, in Pompeio, 64. Appian, 

II. 49. 

18 



264 LANGUAGE HELD BY POMPEY'S PARTY. 

and to the confidence of his soldiers by his skill and strength in 
throwing the javelin, and the perfect address with which he man- 
aged his horse, while he was directing the manoeuvres of the 
cavalry. He hoped to keep the enemy at a distance by the aid 
His fleet. of his numerous fleet, till he had sufficiently organ- 

ized and disciplined his army, to return to Italy wilh every pros- 
pect of final success. All the maritime countries of the eastern 
part of the Mediterranean had contributed their quotas of ships,^^^ 
and the whole naval force was placed under the command of M. 
Bibulus, the colleague of Csesar in his first consulship, who felt a 
Strong personal enmity against him in consequence of their dif- 
ferences at that period. Finally, ample magazines of corn had 
been collected from Thessaly, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Cyrene, 
that the army might be enabled to wait patiently the issue of 
their general's plans, and might not be driven to risk any despe- 
Languageheidbyhis ^^-^^ mcasurcs froiTi tlio waut of provisious. Mean- 
p^^y- time the language held by Pompey was in the 

highest degree lofty and uncompromising. Not only were Cae- 
sar's partisans deservedly spoken of as rebels, and threatened with 
the vengeance of the laws, but all who had remained in Italy, 
and had taken no share in the defence of the commonwealth, 
were considered as guilty of an abandonment of tlieir duty, and 
it was proposed to confiscate their property, in order that the 
faithful soldiers, by whose aid the constitution should be preserved 
and restored to its independence, might be rewaided by its distri- 
bution. Cicero several times speaks in the strongest terms of the 
severities which would have followed the victory of the constitu- 
tionalists,^^" and declares that they would have ordered a general 
proscription, as unsparing as that of Sylla. We are told, indeed, 
by Plutarch, ^^' that a resolution was passed, at Cato's suggestion, 
by the senate assembled at Thessalonica, declaring that no Roman 
citizen should be put to death out of the field of battle, nor any 
city subject to the Roman government given up to plunder. If 
this be true, we must suppose that the declaration Avas meant to 
apply only to the period of actual hostilities ; nor is it unlikely 
that the humanity of Pompey and Cato might have been able 
thus far to mitigate the horrors of warfare, while the violence of 
some of their associates would have defied any such restraint in 
the event of the final triumph of their party. The character of 
Pompey himself is most remote from cruelty, although he may 
have been unable to check the excesses of his partisans, or may 
have threatened to punish, perhaps with an excessive severity, 
the treasons from which he himself, as well as the common- 
wealth, had suffered so heavily. But it is also consistent with 

249 Caesar, III. 3. 5. X. epist. VII. ; XI. epist. VI. Ad Fa- 

250 Ad Atticum, IX, epist. VII. X. XI. ; miliares, IV. epist. IX. ; VII. epist. III. 

251 In Pompeio, 65 ; in Catone, 53. 



PROCEEDINGS OP POMPEY'S FLEET. 265 

Other parts of his life to believe, that whatever irritation he might 
now feel, while witnessing the present success of the rebellion, 
yet when the supreme power was placed in his hands, he would 
have used it with the utmost moderation and fairness, and would 
himself have been sincerely desirous of restoring peace and liberty 
to his country. On the other hand, it must be confessed that the 
members of the high aristocratical party, who had regarded him 
with jealousy from his earliest youth, might have overruled his 
own dispositions, and have either forced him to become the in- 
strument of their rapacious and cruel designs, or have sacrificed 
him to secure their own exclusive ascendency. And doubtless 
the happiness of mankind was ultimately far better secured by the 
victory of Cassar, and the establishment even of his successor's 
despotism, than it would have been by the unchecked dominion 
of the most profligate members of a corrupt aristocracy. 

Such was the state of Pompey's party, when the negligence or 
over-confidence of his naval officers allowed Cgesar, operations of casar 
as we have already mentioned, to transport without after ws lauding. 
opposition from Italy the first division of his army, and to effect a 
landing on the coast of Greece. On the very day of the disem- 
barkation, Caesar advanced to summon the town of Oricum,^^^ 
which was held by an enemy's garrison under the command of 
L. Torquatus. But already the cause of the commonwealth felt 
the disadvantage of having abandoned the seat of government, 
and having allowed Caesar to receive at Rome, from the people 
assembled in the ordinary place of election, the title of Roman 
consul. The garrison, consisting of lllyrian soldiers, and the 
citizens of Oricum, alike refused to resist an officer bearing the 
rank of the chief magistrate of the Roman people ; and Tor- 
quatus, thus deserted, was obliged to surrender himself and the 
town to Caesar. This example was followed by the people of 
Apollonia,^^^ and by a great many other places in the neighbour- 
hood ; so that Caesar immediately acquired a firm footing in the 
country, and by his possession of the towns on the coast, was 
enabled, in a great nleasure, to neutralize the naval superiority of 
the enemy. 

It is probable that the lateness of the season, which though 
nominally the month of January was in reality proceedings of pom- 
the beginning of November, together with Caesar's pey's fleet! 
known want of shipping, had impressed Bibulus with the belief 
that no attempt to invade Greece would be made at present ; and 
that Caesar would require the winter months to complete his pre- 
parations, before he thought of commencing hostilities. Surprised, 
therefore, by the tidings that the enemy were actually arrived on 
the coast of Greece,^^^ Bibulus put to sea in haste from Corcyra, 

252 Caesar, III. 11. 2^4 Qgesar, III. 8. 

"^ Caesar, III. 12. 



26Q PROCEEDINGS OF POMPEY'S FLEET. 

in the hope of intercepting a part, at least, of the transports em- 
ployed in the passage : but Caesar had already landed in safety, 
and Bibuliis only succeeded in cutting off about thirty of the empty 
vessels, which Caesar had ordered instantly to return to Brundis- 
ium. His vexation at his own want of vigilance, combined with 
his general hatred against Cassar, led him to commit an atrocious 
act of cruelty upon the masters and crews of the vessels which 
thus fell into his hands ; for having set the ships on fire, he burnt 
the men in the same flames. He then lined the coast with detach- 
ments of his fleet from Salone to Oricum, a distance of about two 
hundred miles ; and as a mark of his resolution to use every pos- 
sible exertion, it is said that he lived entirely on board his ship, 
even at that inclement season. The ancient ships of war, it should 
be remembered, being calculated chiefly for coasting voyages, and 
accustomed to send their crews ashore on every occasion to take 
their meals and to sleep, were very ill provided with accommoda- 
tions in themselves, and could neither hold a large supply of 
provisions, nor afford tolerable quarters on board for the officers 
and men. To remain, therefore, continually at sea, was attended 
with great inconvenience, and considerable distress ; and thus 
when Caesar's occupation of the landing-places on the coast pre- 
vented the enemy from coming on shore, or from getting supplies of 
wood and water, he retaliated upon them to the full the annoyance 
which he suffered from their blockade. But Bibulus, and the of- 
ficers and men under his command, bore their privations with the 
utmost patience and resolution ; transports were employed in 
bringing them regular supplies of wood, water, and provisions, 
from Corcyra f^^ and when the badness of the weather on one 
occasion interrupted this communication, they are said to have 
wrung the dew from the skins with which the holds of their ships 
were covered, and thus to have allayed the intensity of their thirst. 
They enjoyed, however, the satisfaction of feeling that they were 
effectually stopping the passage of the second division of Caesar's 
army, which it had been intended to transport without loss of 
time on board the vessels which had returned to Brundisium, after 
carrying over the first division. The troops were actually em- 
barked, and had just left the harbour, when a despatch arrived 
from Caesar, announcing the strict blockade maintained on the 
opposite shore by the enemy's cruisers. Immediately the ships 
returned to Brundisium ; and one single private vessel, which had 
no troops on board, resolving still to attempt the passage, was taken 
by Bibulus off Oricum, and, according to Caesar, "^^ the whole ship's 
company, both freemen and slaves, were by his orders put to 
death. Caesar thus seemed left to his fate in an enemy's country 
with only half his army, cut off from all relief, and obliged to 

«* Ctesar, III. 15. «« Ctesar, III. 14. 



OPPOSITION OF THE TWO ARMIES. 267 

depend for subsistence only on the narrow district immediately sub- 
ject to his control. 

But his system of always acting on the offensive, tended at once 
to keep up the confidence of his own soldiers, and caesar attempts in 
to make public opinion think favourably of his situ- JhacWum.''™'^ 
ation. After having gained possession of Oricum and Apollonia, 
he hastened forward in the hope of surprising Dyrrhachium, one of 
Pompey's principal magazines, and the place in which he had de- 
signed to fix his winter-quarters, in order to be at hand to counter- 
act Caesar's expected invasion in the spring. At the moment of 
Caesar's landing, Pompey was in the interior of Macedonia,^^^ pro- 
ceeding slowly towards his intended winter-quarters, by the great 
road which crossed the whole country from Thessalonica, on the 
^gean, to Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the Ionian gulf. He 
was already advanced as far as Candavia, which lies at nearly 
equal distances between the two seas, when he was met with the 
news of Caesar's invasion. He immediately hastened his march 
towards Apollonia ; but finding that this town had already fallen, 
he turned off to the right, and pressed on with a rapidity, al- 
most resembling a flight of a beaten army, in order to save his 
magazines at Dyrrhachium. As the troops marched by day and 
night without halting, many of the soldiers, unable to bear the fa- 
tigue, dropped behindj^s^ threw away their arms, and deserted ; 
and this produced so much disorder and consequent dejection, that 
although Pompey accomplished his object, and, having outstripped 
his antagonist, encamped his army in front of Dyrrhachium to 
cover the town, yet T. Labienus, and the other principal officers, 
thought it expedient to renew, in a public and solemn manner, 
their oath of fidelity to their general, swearing that they would 
abide by him in every extremity of fortune. The troops all follow- 
ed this example ; and soon afterwards their spirits ^he two armies 
were revived by an order to make a movement another on*° the 
somewhat in advance ; for Caesar, finding himself -^^p^"^- 
cut off from Dyrrhachium, had halted on the river Apsus, intend- 
ing to winter there under canvass, in order to protect the country 
in his rear which had espoused his cause, and proposing there to 
await the arrival of the rest of his army from Italy. Cassar thus 
having fixed himself on the left bank of the Apsus, ^'^ Pompey ad- 
vanced with his army from Dyrrhachium, and occupied a line on 
the right bank of the same river, to which he brought together his 
entire force, both Roman and auxiliary. A pause of some length 
then ensued in the operations on both sides, partly on account of 
the season of the year, and partly because neither general wished 
to risk an action at present ; the one being desirous of improving 

=*" Caesar, III. 11. Strabo, VII. 374, ^^^ Caesar, III. 13. 
edit. Xyland. ^^^ q^ss^^^ ni. 13. Appian, II. 56. 



26S INEFFECTUAL OVERTURES FOR PEACE. 

Still further the disciplnie of his soldiers, and the other being 
anxious to gain an accession to his numbers. 

During this interval some proposals of peace were exchanged 
Ineffectual overtures betwceu the two parties, but without producing any 
for peace. cfFect. Indeed, the ofRccr fi'om whoui Pompoy had 

received the first tidings of Caesar's landing in Greece, was himself 
the bearer of a message from Caesar,''^" conjuring Pompey to con- 
sider the evils which a protracted contest would certainly bring 
upon their country ; proposing that each commander should take 
an oath, in the presence of his army, to disband his forces within 
three days ; and that the terms of a permanent peace might be 
settled at Rome by the senate and people ; oifering, meantime, as 
a pledge of his sincerity, to disband at once all his own soldiers', 
whether they were in the field or in garrison. There was no time 
for replying to these propositions, till Pompey's army was settled on 
the Apsus ; then, when L. Vibullius Rufus, the bearer of them, was 
proceeding to state them in detail, Pompey is said to have inter- 
rupted him,^^^ and to have declared, "that he valued neither his 
life nor the enjoyment of his country, if he must receive them as 
a favour from Caesar." A little before this, Bibulus and L. Scri- 
bonius Libo,'^" who were maintaining their blockade off the har- 
bour of Oricum, proposed to Caesar's officers, commanding in the 
town, that a truce should be concluded between the fleet and 
Caesar's troops stationed along the coast, in order to allow time 
for entering upon a negotiation for peace. Caesar himself had 
just left his lines on the Apsus, and had marched southward 
with a single legion, to secure some of the towns that were situa- 
ted at a greater distance in, his rear, and to procure some supplies 
of corn. In pursuit of these objects, he was now at Buthrotum, 
a town on the main land of Epirus, immediately opposite to Cor- 
cyra, when he received intelligence from his officers at Oricum, of 
the proposals made by Bibulus and Libo. He at once hastened 
in person to the spot, and Libo came on shore alone to meet him ; 
Bibulus, it seems, thinking that an interview between himself and 
Caesar was more likely to inflame the existing quarrel than to 
allay it. Libo assured Caesar that nothing could be concluded 
without Pompey's authority; and only requested that a truce 
might be arranged till proposals of peace should be presented to 
Pompey, and till his answer to them could be kuown. He asserted, 
that Pompey was most anxious to terminate the contest ; and that 
for himself, his advice, and that of the other officers, would all 
lead to the same conclusion. Caesar, in return, pressed Libo to 
guarantee the safety of the officers wliom he might send to Pom- 
pey's camp ; and with regard to the naval armistice, he said that 

*«» Cffisar, III. 10, II. 262 Ctesar, III. 15, 16, 17. 

««' Caesar, III. 18. 



CESAR'S ACCOUNT SUSPICIOUS. ^69 

he was willing to grant it, if the enemy's fleet would renounce their 
blockade, and allow the free passage of his troops from Italy. 
Libo replied, that he could guarantee nothing, but referred every 
thing to Pompey ; at the same time he again urged the conclusion 
of the naval armistice. But Caesar perceiving, as he says, that 
nothing more was designed by the enemy than to procure some 
relief for their ships, by obtaining leave to get supplies from the 
shore, broke off the conference, and turned his thoughts to the 
active prosecution of the war. 

Such is the representation of these transactions which Caesar 
or his partisans have given to the world. We may c=Bsar's account of 
repeat it, in the absence of all other testimony ; but be^'reg'^rfed" with 
we should remember, that it is the statement of the suspicion. 
chief of a victorious party, and that it relates to matters of which 
he himself, when his account was published, was the only wit- 
ness who dared to deliver his evidence. In the narrative, also, of 
this very transaction, there is one remarkable expression, which 
seems to imply that the writer was anxious to record nothing that 
would not redound to Cassar's honour. Libo, it seems, during 
his conference with Caesar, entered into some representation of 
the merits of the cause which he espoused, and of the amount of 
Pompey's forces ; "but on these points," says the historian,'^^^ 
" Caesar thought proper to make no reply at the time, nor do we 
see any sufficient reason for dwelling on the subject now." The 
writer of this sentence, whether it was Caesar himself, or one of 
his offi.cers writing under his authority, was well aware that the 
merits of his cause could not bear any minute detail, and that 
the manner in which the friends of the commonwealth repre- 
sented them was too forcible, and in the main too just, to admit of 
any satisfactory reply. He acted wisely, therefore, as a party 
writer, in passing by the subject altogether ; but he has by so 
doing left us, at the same time, a sufficient proof how little he 
deserves the title of a historian. 

Yet the narrative of this writer, such as it is, and rendered in 
parts still more defective from the corrupt state of the text in our 
present copies, is our sole authority for any particular account of 
the operations of this important campaign. The English reader 
will, perhaps, have a more lively sense of its incompetence, if he 
considers what sort of a history could be drawn up of the events 
of more modern wars, if we had no other materials than the ga- 
zettes or bulletins of one party only. We must request those, 
therefore, who may follow us through our narrative of the ensu- 
ing transactions, to remember, once for all, that we are fully aware 
of the unsatisfactory foundation on which it rests ; and that if we 

263 it jjug addit pauca (Libo) -de causa, timavit ; neque nunc, ut memoriaB proda- 
et de copiis auxiliisque suis. Quibus re- tur, satis causae putamus," III. 16, 17. 
bus neque turn respondendum Ceesar exis- 



270 COMMUNICATION OP THE TWO ARMIES. 

do not repeat our sense of its uncertainty in every page, it is only 
to avoid unpleasant and needless interruptions to the course of 
our relation. Besides, in ordinary cases, we are willing to leave 
the reader to the exercise of his own judgment, whenever the 
story becomes justly suspicious, rather than attempt on every oc- 
casion to dictate to him ourselves. Unquestionably, the writer of 
Caesar's " Commentaries" had the best opportunities of knowing 
the truth ; and he is perfectly free from those blunders in indiffer- 
ent matters which are the result of mere ignorance. His misrep- 
resentations and misstatements are for the most part wilful ; and 
it becomes a matter of great difficulty and uncertainty, to say 
how often the temptation was sufficiently strong to induce him 
to write against that better knowledge, which makes him, where 
no such temptation has interfered, so respectable a witness. 

Whilst the two armies were encamped on the Apsus,^^* several 
Irregular communi- attcuipts wcrc made, ou CsBsar's part, to keep up a 
Sid?eri'ofThe"two correspondeuce bet wen the soldiers of either party, 
"'™^^- and to impress on the minds of Pompey's followers, 

his own eagerness to terminate the contest. The generals of the 
commonwealth, remembering the issue of a similar correspondence 
between the troops of Sylla and Scipio in the last civil war, were 
no way inclined to expose their newly-raised and ill-assorted 
soldiers to the seductions of Cajsar's veterans ; it being sufficiently 
obvious which side was most likely to entice the other from its 
It is suddenly broken duty. Thc mcctiugs betwoeu the men and the in- 
rais.^ ompeysgene- ^gj^.^^^, officers of the two partlcs, wliicli had gone 
on to a considerable extent, were at last forcibly broken off, on 
one occasion, by Pompey's generals, and some of the centurions 
and soldiers of Caesar's army were wounded. This was in the 
same spirit with the conduct of Petreius in Spain, and was dic- 
tated by a similar sense of danger. It was a proceeding of great 
severity, but yet not inconsistent with the laws of war, as the 
meetings were not authorized by the coramander-in chief of the 
commonwealth's army, who alone, as Caesar had beeij on a late 
occasion particularly informed, had power to guarantee the safety 
of any negotiator from the enemy. The assertion of Ca3sar that 
Labienus hhnself appeared at the conference, and was actually 
in conversation with P. Vatinius, Caesar's officer, when the meet- 
ing was broken off by acts of hostility on the part of Pompey, is 
intended to convey a charge of wilful treachery, of which we 
cannot, in fairness, convict Labienus on the sole testimony of his 
personal as well as political adversary. 

While the war was thus pausing in its course, and M. Anto- 
Tumuiu excited. at nius, with the second division of Caesar's army, 
kTiS. ^ ■^'^'"^ ^yg^s still detained at Brundisium, unable to join his 

«« Caesar, III. 19. 



TUMULTS EXCITED AT ROME BY CiELIUS RUFUS, 211 

commander, a wild attempt was made to effect a coimter-revoln- 
tion in Italy. ^^^ The name of M. Cselius Rufus has already been 
mentioned in our account of the turbulent period of Pompey's 
third consulship. He was then one of the tribunes, and exerted 
himself warmly in behalf of Milo, amidst the agitations which 
followed the murder of P. Clodius ; he also made himself partic- 
ularly notorious by his opposition to the laws then proposed by 
Pompey with a view to the regulation of Milo's trial ; and he so 
provoked Pompey as to draw from him the threat, " that if he 
met with any more obstructions, he would protect the interests of 
the commonwealth by force of arms." Like Curio, he was elo- 
quent, unprincipled, and ambitious of distinction ; and therefore, 
during the height of Pompey's power at Rome, he delighted, like 
Curio, in appearing to defy him, as the readiest means of gaining 
favour with the multitude, who are ever ready to admire a spirit 
of resistance to authority. He thus was led to favour the preten- 
sions of Caesar, to which he was further induced by his friendship 
for Curio,2s^ and his enmity to Appius Claudius, who was now 
closely connected with Pompey. Yet his intimacy with Cicero, 
to whose notice he had been early recommended by his father,*^" 
and who had defended him some years before under a criminal 
prosecution, might have restrained him from openly taking part 
against the commonwealth, had he not been led to accompany 
Curio to Ariminum at the beginning of the war,'^^^ and been brought 
to a personal meeting with Cassar, by consenting to be the bearer of 
a message to him from Cicero, urging him to lay aside his designs of 
hostility. It seems that Csesars's winning address and behaviour, 
together with a nearer view of the resources by which he was 
supported, decided him in remaining with the rebel army, and 
accepting employment in Caesar's service. He accordingly at- 
tended him on his way towards Spain,^^^ and on his return thence, 
at the end of the year, he was elected praetor, as a reward for his 
attachment to his cause."" But the death of Curio had removed 
the principal link between him and his present associates ; and 
although he was one of the praetors, yet he held only the less 
dignified rank of Prcstor Peregrinus ; the office of PrcBtor Ur- 
banus, which possessed exclusive jurisdiction in all causes 
between citizens and citizens, was conferred on C. Trebonius, 

^"^ Caesar, III. 20, 21, 22. Spain : and that he was engaged in some 

^®'' Cicero, pro CbbUo, 3. attempts to excite disturbances among the 

*®* Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. legions left for the protection of Italy. Pos- 

XVII. sibly, therefore, Caesar did not take him 

***• Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. with him into Spain, but left him with 

XVII. those troops, in Cisalpine Gaul, which did, 

^^ Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. XV. in fact, break out into mutiny, as already 

^""^ It appears from some brief intima- related, about the time of Caesar's return 

tions in Cicero's letters to Atticus, that from Spain. Vide Cicero, ad Atticum, X. 

Caelius was already disgusted with Caesar's epist. XII. XV. XVI. 

party before the end of the campaign in 



272 VIOLENT MEASURES OF C^LIUS. 

who had conducted the operations by land at the late siege of 
Massilia. His love of distinction, therefore, was ill gratified by 
his present situation ; he felt himself slighted, and was desirous 
of at once revenging his fancied afi"ronts upon Caesar's party, and 
of regaining the friendship of the aristocrats, who were his old 
and natural connexions, and whom his late behaviour had 
alienated. 

Under the influence of these motives, Caslius began to tread 
Violent measures of iu thc stcDS of thc old popular tribuucs,'^^^ and, 

CcBlius in his prastor- ■, . . ^ c r^ : n i ^ ..• • ^^ 

ship. complaming oi Caesars late regulations with re- 

gard to the payment of debts, he declared that he would support 
any debtor who should appeal against a sentence of the Prmtor 
Urbanus, adjudging payment according to the terms fixed by 
Caesar. Finding, if we may believe Caesar, that no appeals were 
brought to him, he proceeded to propose a law of his own, direct- 
ing that debts were to be paid at six instalments, without any 
interest. It is very probable that many of the timid and indolent 
part of the aristocracy, who preferred remaining at Rome under 
Caesar's government, rather than submitting to the labours and 
perils of a civil war, were delighted to find their new circum- 
stances suddenly reconciled, by these innovations of Caelius, with 
the line they would naturally take in politics. P. Servilius, Cae- 
sar's colleague in the consulship, whose father had in like manner 
been the colleague of Sylla, and who himself, a few years before, 
had been remarked as affecting to imitate Cato,*^'^ was now called 
upon, while supporting the government of Caesar, to act like the 
high aristocratical consuls of former times, L. Opimius, or Cn. 
Octavius, or Q,. Catulus. Supported by the other magistrates, he 
resisted the measures of Caelius, who finding his present law not 
sufficiently stimulating, proposed two others of a tendency still 
more revolutionary ; one releasing all tenants of houses in Rome 
from their liability to be sued for rent during one year ; and the 
other proclaiming a general release to all insolvent debtors from 
the claims of their creditors. Caslius had now degraded himself 
low enough to become the head of the most worthless portion of 
the community : mobs assembled as in the days of L. Satiirninus, 
P. Sulpicius, and P. Clodius; and Trebonius was driven by vio- 
lence from his seat of judgment. Servilius laid the consideration 
of these disturbances before the senate, and that body passed a 
resolution, the very same which had formerly been passed against 
Caesar himself in his praetorship, that Caelius should be suspended 
Ho IB obliged to leave ^'■'om tlic dutics aud privileges of his office. He still 
'^'""^- attempted to harangue the people, but was forcibly 

pulled down from the rostra ; and the support of the mere rabble 

"' Caesar, III. 20. Livy, Epitome, *" Cicero,aJ Atticum, 11. epist. I. 
CXI. Dion Cassius, XLII. 195. 



ATTEMPT TO REVIVE POMPEY'S INTERESTS IN ITALY. 373 

being, as usual, utterly powerless in the time of need, he re- 
solved to quit Rome, professing that he was going over to 
Macedonia, to offer to Ccesar an explanation and apology for 
his conduct. 

There is still extant a letter from Ceelius to Cicero, '^''^ written 
apparently when he was just entered on this career of fruitless 
opposition to Cgesar's government. He flatters himself that he 
had alienated the general feeling at Rome from the cause of Cae- 
sar ; and that the poorer citizens who had hitherto regarded it as 
the popular side, now thought that it had abandoned their in- 
terests, and were ready to receive the friends of Pompey with 
open arms. He assures Cicero that it was Pompey's own fault 
that he had not recovered possession of Rome, for that every body 
there, with the exception of a few usurers, was now become his 
partisan. He promises to insure the triumph of the aristocracy, 
even against their will, and laments the bhndness of Pompey in 
neglecting the fair field that was open to him in Italy, and per- 
sisting to combat Caesar's veteran army in direct and open war- 
fare. But a short time proved how greatly he had overrated the 
effect of his measures and of his abilities. On He invites Miio to join 
leaving Rome he had entered into a correspond- rewvetherntS'so" 
ence with his old associate, T. Milo,^^* who was Powey in itaiy. 
ready to join in any attempt against Caesar, as he had been alone 
excepted by him from the general pardon granted to all who 
had been banished by the sentence of the tribunals in Pompey's 
third consulship. Milo still retaiued,"^ either in his service or 
under his influence, some of those numerous gladiators whom he 
had formerly employed in his contests with Clodius. At the 
head of a party of these he appeared in arms in the neighbour- 
hood of Capua ; and professing that he had received, through 
Bibulus, a commission to levy troops in Pompey's name, he began 
to solicit the inhabitants of the different towns to join him. His 
character and resources, however, held out little encouragement ; 
but having collected a certain number of runaway slaves, and of 
those who were kept at work in fetters in some of the work- 
houses, he made an attempt upon the town of Compsa,^^® and 
there lost his life by a stone discharged from one of the engines 
on the walls. Caelius, meantime, had not entirely thrown off the 
mask. He had secretly endeavoured to surprise Capua by the 
help of some gladiators who were then kept at Naples, and of 
some partisans in the town itself; but the plot being discovered 
in time to prevent its execution, he continued his journey south- 
ward, as if still pursuing his original design of going to Caesar 
in Greece. But when he reached Thurii, he conceived hopes 

2" Cicero, ad Familiar. VIII. epist. «5 Cfesar, III 21, 22. 
XVII. «76 Velleius Paterculus, II. 68. 

^* Cffisar, III. 21. 



274 DEATH OF M. BIBULUS. 

of gaining that important place for Pompey, and accord- 
ingly he began to tamper with some of the inhabitants, and 
also with some Gaulish and German horse whom Csesar 
had left there as a garrison. To have secured a harbour for 
Pompey's ships on the coast of Italy, would have been one 
of the most signal services that could have been rendered at 
this period to the cause of the commonwealth ; but the at- 
tempt was unsuccessful, and, according to Caesar, Caelius was 
csiiusandMiioare killed by souie of those soldiers whose fidehty he 
■^'"ed- was endeavouring to corrupt. Like most other 

fruitless insurrections, the disturbance excited by Cselius and Milo 
being thus quickly suppressed, rather tended, we may suppose, 
to strengthen Csesar's authority ; and persons possessed of prop- 
erty were more reconciled to his government when they found it 
ready to protect them against the violence of the needy and the 
desperate. 

About this time Pompey sustained a severe loss in the death 
of M. Calpurnius Bibulus, the commander-in-chief 
of his fleet.^''' The vigilance which this officer 
had lately exerted, in order to atone for his previous neglect in 
suffering Csesar to cross the Ionian gulf, had thus far been com- 
pletely successful in preventing the passage of the troops under 
M. Antonius, but it proved in the end fatal to himself Fatigue, 
anxiety, and insufficient accommodations, severely affected his 
health ; he refused, however, to quit his post, and persisted in 
struggling against his complaints till he sank under them. On 
his death, his place as commander-in-chief was left vacant, pos- 
sibly from some intrigues at Pompey's head-quarters, which made 
it difficult for the general to fix upon a successor. But the bad 
effects of this omission were soon notorious, for each separate 
commander of a squadron began to act for himself; and L. Scri- 
bonius Libo,*^" departing from the defensive system of Bibulus, 
crossed the Ionian gulf with the fifty ships which formed his own 
division, and proposed to blockade the port of Brundisium itself, 
by occupying a small island which was opposite to the mouth of 
the harbour. His sudden appearance enabled him to surprise 
some vessels laden with corn, which he burnt or captured ; he 
disembarked also a party of troops, with which he dislodged a 
body of Cajsar's cavalry from one of their posts near the shore ; 
and, elated with these exploits, he wrote to Pompey to assure him 
that he might safely venture to bring the rest of the fleet into port 
to refit, for that he himself, with his single squadron, would engage 
to prevent the passage of Cassar's reinforcements. A short time, 
however, proved the emptiness of these promises, for the island 
which Libo occupied was unable to furnish the ships with a suf- 

»" Caesar, III. 18. "» Csesar, 23, 24. 



ANTONIUS EMBARKS AT BRUNDISIUM. 375 

ficient supply of fresh water ; and after the first surprise was over, 
Antonius stationed his parties of cavahy along the shore in such 
numbers, that they could not be dislodged, and thus effectually cut 
off the enemy from all communication with the land. The ina- 
biUty of an ancient fleet to act with success without military co- 
operation was thus again proved ; and Libo was obliged to abandon 
the blockade of Brundisium, and resume his original station on the 
coast of Greece. 

At length the winter was an end,'^''' andPompey's naval force 
had kept the sea through the most unfavourable cssar becomes im- 
season of the year with unabated resolution. Their Sf hlfexVected'^re^ 
task would now become much easier, and the diffi- wforcements. 
culty of effecting a passage would be proportionably increased to 
Caesar's second division. He himself complains that his officers 
at Brundisium had neglected some opportunities of which they 
might have availed themselves ; and being impatient of their long 
delay, he wrote to them in very strong terms, enjoining them to 
put to sea with the first fair wind, and recommending them to 
steer for the coast of Apollonia, if possible, which, from its want 
of harbours, was less guarded by the enemy's fleet ; adding, that 
they might there run their ships aground, and that the loss of the 
vessels was comparatively of no importance. But trusting, above 
all things, in the effect of his own presence, he made a bold at- 
tempt to cross over in person to Brundisium ; and having left his 
army secretly by night, he embarked in disguise on board of a 
small vessel, and although the weather was very tempestuous, 
and the wind against him, he endeavoured at the utmost hazard 
to effect the passage of the Ionian gulf; nor was he induced to 
desist till he found it utterly impossible to accomplish his purpose,^^" 
His letters, however, had produced a sufficient effect ; the soldiers 
themselves, he tells us, pressed their officers to risk the voyage ; 
and M. Antonius and Q,. Fufius Calenus, with four m. Antonius embarks 
legions and about eight hundred cavaly, at length sium™°''^ ^' '^'™'^'' 
set sail with a south wind from Brundisium. But, with the wind 
in such a quarter, they not only failed to reaching Apollonia, but 
could not even make any land southward of Dyrrhachium. They 
were thus seen from Dyrrhachium by C. Coponius,^^* one of the 
proprseters," who commanded the Rhodian squadron at that port, 
and he instantly put to sea in pursuit of them. Flight was their 

^™ Caesar, III. 25. ing himself to him in the midst of the 

^^ Valerius Maximus, IX. 8. The storm, and telling him not to be afraid, for 

story, as given in the text, is copied from that he carried with him CcRsar and his 

Valerius Maximus, the earliest writer in fortune, resemble ihose embellishments of 

whom we have, found any mention of it. some simple expression or occurrence 

The famous additions to it, which are which anecdotes of great men are apt to 

given by Florus, Dion Cassius, Appian, gain in proportion to the number of per- 

and Plutarch, that Caesar encouraged the sons who successively report them, 
terrified master of the vessel, by discover- ''*' Caesar, III. 26, 27. 



276 ANTONIUS LANDS AT NYMPH^UM. 

only resource, and they ran before the wind northward, towards 
the harbour of Nymphasum, which, though open to the south, and 
threatening the loss of their ships, still held out a chance of their 
effecting a landing. But, by one of those remarkable instances of 
good fortune which have occurred in our own naval history on 
some memorable occasions, the wind suddenly shifted to the south- 
west, as soon as the transports had reached Nymphseum ; and 
thus, owing to the position of the harbour, they were now in per- 
fect safety, whilst sixteen of the enemy's ships, that were most 
forward in the chase, were all driven on shore and wrecked. Of 
the crews a considerable number perished, and many were taken 
by Ceesar's soldiers ; but these last, he tells us, he treated with 
humanity, and dismissed them unhurt to their own homes. 

Two of Antonius's transports, being heavier sailers than the 
rest,'^^^ were overtaken by the night, and, not knowing what was 
become of their companions, came to an anchor off Lissus. Ota- 
cilius Crassus, who commanded Pompey's garrison in the town, 
sent off a number of armed boats and vessels to attack them, and 
summoned them both to surrender. One of them, which had on 
board 220 men of a newly-raised legion, submitted immediately f^^ 
but the other contained about 200 veterans, who, although weak- 
ened and wretched from the confinement and sickness of a stormy 
voyage, preserved their courage, and compelled the master of the 
transport to run the ship on shore. They found a position favour- 
able for their defence ; and, after repulsing an attack that was 
made upon them on the following morning, they reached the main 
HeiandsatNymphi- body of tlic aiiTiy, whlcli had landed atNymphceum 
iibnc°um, and^'^occu- wlthout loss. Immediately afterwards, Lissus, 
pies t e o\%no is- ^^^|^jp|-^ ^y^^ witliiu tlic limlts of Caesar's province of 

Illyricum, and had received some favours from him during his 
government as proconsul, opened its gates to Antonius ; and that 
officer, having sent back most of the transports to Italy, to bring 
over some reinforcements that were yet expected, sent word to 
Csesar of his landing, informing him of the numbers that he had 
brought with him, and of the part of the country at which he had 
effected his descent. 

As the transports had been seen from the shore passing by 
ApoUonia and Dyrrhachium,^^^ their arrival in the neighbourhood 
was known both to CsBsar and Pompey ; but neither was at first 
aware of the precise point at which they might have come to 

'^^^ Caesar, III. 28, 29. rativea statement of this nature, which ie 

*^' Caesar adds, that they were all mas- utterly improbable in its present form, al- 

sacred, although their lives had been sol- though it be very likely founded on some- 

emnly promised to them. We can only thing which did actually happen under dif- 

regret that we have not the report of Ota- ferent circumstances. 

cilius Crassus on this affair ; but as it is, '•** Csesar, III. 30. 

we cannot admit into the body of our nar- 



C^SAR FOLLOWS POMPEY TO ASPARAGIUM. 377 

shore. Both generals immediately broke up from their positions 
on the Apsus ; Pompey, with the hope of surprising and cutting 
off the troops under Antonius, and Ceesar with the view of effect- 
ing his junction with them. But, as Csesar was delayed by being 
obliged to march up the left bank of the Apsus for some distance, 
in order to find a ford, Pompey might possibly have succeeded in 
his object, had not his approach been communicated to Antonius 
by some of the people of the country. Thus aware of his danger, 
Antonius suspended his march, (for it seems that he had set out 
from Lissus to meet Caesar,) and kept his troops during one whole 
day within the protection of their camp ; till, on the next day, 
Csesar, having recovered the ground which he had lost, came up 
with the main body of his army. It was now He effects hisjunction 
Pompey's turn to be apprehensive for his safety ; ^"^ c*'"- 
and, accordingly, he fell back to avoid being surrounded, allowed 
the enemy's two divisions to effect their junction, and marching 
with his whole force to Asparagium, a small town subject to the 
people of Dyrrhachium, but whose exact situation is not known, 
he there encamped his army again in a favourable position. 
CsBsar, on the other hand, now found himself enabled to extend 
the scene of his operations.^^^ To maintain a large force on the 
coast was become less important ; he diminished, therefore, the 
number of his troops in that quarter, and sent three considerable 
detachments into ^tolia, Thessaly, and Macedonia, as he had 
reason to expect that the inhabitants of those countries would 
declare in his favour, as soon as they could do so with safety ; and 
as his supplies by sea were rendered worse than precarious by the 
superiority of the enemy's navy, it was highly expedient that he 
should command the resources of a more extensive district than 
that narrow strip of coast to which he had hitherto been confined. 
He himself, as soon as he learned the new position CiBsar follows pom- 
in which Pompey had placed his army,^^^ followed p^^ *° Asparagium. 
him thither, and offered him battle. The challenge was declined ; 
for if Pompey had not thought proper to meet his enemy in the 
field before the arrival of Antonius, he was much less likely to 
risk a general action now. But an army, which feels itself supe- 
rior to its antagonists, enjoys a great advantage in the freedom 
of its movements ; for, as it is its interest to bring on a general 
engagement, it may attempt any enterprise it pleases, with the 
twofold chance either of winning that particular object, or of 
forcing the enemy to a battle if he endeavours to offer any oppo- 
sition. In this manner, Cassar, finding that his adversary was 
resolved to avoid an action, conceived the plan of marching upon 
Dyrrhachium, which, as we have already stated, was one of the 
principal magazines of Pompey. To mislead his enemy, he set 

"5 Cffisar, in. 34, 35, et seq. «88 Csesar, IIL 41, 42. 



278 CESAR PROPOSES TO BLOCKADE POMPEY. 

out at first from his camp in a different direction ; and it was not 
till the following morning that Pompey, having discovered in the 
mean time his real intention, commenced his own march towards 
He marches upon Dyrrhacliium, in order to counteract it. Csesar, 
M^mps^beforethe howcvcr, had gained in time more than he had lost 
'"""i- in distance by the circuitous route which he had 

taken ; he pressed his march, moreover, with the utmost activity, 
allowing his men to rest only during a short portion of the night, 
and thus he appeared in front of Dyrrhachium early in the morn- 
ing, and formed his camp before the town, so as to cut off all ap- 
pompey encamps at proach to it. Pompcy, finding himself shut out 
Twum."^''' °^" ^" from Dyrrhachium, took up a position on some high 
ground near the sea, known by the name of Petra, or Cliff, and 
which commanded a small harbour or bay, where vessels with 
some winds might ride at anchor, or be drawn on the beach with 
safety. Hither, accordingly, he collected a part of his fleet, and 
hither he ordered his supplies to be brought by sea from all the 
parts of the empire which acknowledged his authority. 

Thus were the two contending parties opposed to one another 
at Dyrrhachium ; and notwithstanding Caesar's good fortune in 
seeing his whole army united on the eastern side of the Ionian 
gulf, he had as yet no prospect of bringing the war to a speedy 
termination. The naval force of the enemy preserved and even 
improved its ascendency f^^ and not only cut off all chance of 
supplies from Italy, but had lately made one or two successful 
attacks on some of the ports of Epirus, which were in the posses- 
sion of his troops, and had burnt or captured most of the ships 
which he had detained there out of the fleets used in transporting 
his army from Brundisium. Nor had Pompey been obliged to 
divide his own forces in order to oppose the detachments which 
Caesar had recently sent into Thessaly and Macedonia ; for his 
father-in-law, Scipio,-^^ had just arrived from Asia with the le- 
gions which he had raised in his province of Syria, and was able 
to occupy the attention of Caesar's lieutenants, without requiring 
any assistance from the commander-in-chief. Under these cir- 
ccBsar proposes to cumstauces, CaBsar formed the plan of blockading 

blockade Pompey in i-» i • -^ •^- j. Tt i. i, 

his position. Pompey s army m its position at Petra, by con- 

structing lines of circumvallation extensive enough to intercept 
all the enemy's communications with the interior of the country ; 
a measure to which, as he tells us, he was led by several con- 
siderations ;'^^' for he hoped, in the first place, to render useless 
the fine and numerous cavalry of Pompey, and to secure his own 
foraging parties from its attacks ; and he wished, besides, to pre- 
serve the reputation of his arms, and to gain the credit of block- 

""T Cffisar, III. 40. 42. "' Cffisar, III. 43. 

s»8 Cffisar, HI. 31—38. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE LINES AND OPERATIONS. 379 

ading Pompey the Great in his camp, and forcing him thus prac- 
tically to confess his own inferiority. Above all, it was necces- 
sary for him to employ his army in some active operations ; in 
the course of which, he flattered himself, circumstances might 
arise which might bring his troops into contact with the enemy, 
in spite of Pompey's determination to avoid every engagement, 
and to trust to time and his naval superiority for a successful ter- 
mination of the war. 

An attempt to detail minutely all the operations that followed, 
would scarcely be of any value, without a more Description of the 
intelligible guide than our present copies of Caesar's ilf^^'e" neilhboT 
" Commentaries " can supply, and without a more um.'^ °' "^"''"='''' 
perfect knowledge of the ground than it is now, perhaps, possible 
to obtain. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with a gene- 
ral view of the object pursued by each party, and of the man- 
ner in which this first act of the campaign, if we may use 
the expression, was brought to a conclusion. No sooner did 
Pompey perceive his adversary's design of hemming him in on 
the sea coast,'^^'' than he began to construct lines on his side, 
which he continually carried out to a greater distance, that he 
might command a larger space for the quarters of his own army, 
and might multiply the labour and difficulty of the operations of 
the enemy. The fortifications of each party consisted of forts 
placed on the most commanding points of the country, and con- 
nected with one another by a rampart and ditch. Frequent con-. 
tests took place between the troops employed in these works ; as 
the possession of any important height, if gained by Cassar, ena- 
bled him to draw his lines more closely around the enemy : or, 
if secured by Pompey, threw back his adversaries to a greater dis- 
tance, and gave a greater freedom of movement to his own army. 
The result was, that Pompey raised no fewer than twenty-four 
forts, all connected with each other by continuous works, and 
thus gained a space of fifteen miles in circuit for the accommo- 
dation and subsistence of his soldiers ; while Caesar, persevering 
in his original design, completed a blockading line of the extra- 
ordinary length of eighteen miles,^"' following the whole extent 
of the works of the enemy. Nor was this all ; for, where his 
line came down to the sea, he constructed a second line parallel 
to it at the distance of about two hundred yards, and facing to- 
wards the opposite direction, to prevent his main line from being 
attacked in the rear, if Pompey should embark troops on board 
his ships, and direct them to cause a diversion, by landing on 
the outside of the blockading line, and attacking it on that quar- 
ter. For further security, these two lines were to be connected 
by a transverse line parallel to the sea, and closing up the open- 

"^ Cffisar, III. 44. 29' Csesar, III. 63. 

19 



280 INCONVENIENCES SUFFERED BY BOTH ARMIES. 

ing between them; but this thhd work was not completed, 
owing to the immense magnitude of the labour which the army 
had to perform in other quarters ; and the omission was after- 
wards attended, as we shall see, by some important consequences. 
Both armies suffered some privations in this extraordinary 
kind of warfare.^^^ Ccesar's soldiers were most pressed by the 
scarcity of wheat, an article which they seem to have consider- 
inconvenienees suf- ^d SO iudlspensably ucccssary, that their general 
feredbj- both armies, praises their fortitude in high terms for enduring 
the want of it ; although their condition does not seem to have 
been very deplorable, if, as Csesar admits, they were plentifully 
supplied with meat, vegetables, barley, and a root which he calls 
chara, and which, he tells us, they used to prepare Avith milk, 
and make cakes of it. On the other side, Pompey's troops had 
wheat in abundance ; but their situation in other respects was 
much worse than that of the enemy. As their position was near 
the sea, the streams naturally flowed down through it from the 
higher ground occupied by Caesar's lines ; and Caesar was thus 
enabled either to turn their course, or to pond up the water with 
great labour in those narrow valleys or gorges into which the 
springs of the hills first discharged themselves, before they reach- 
ed the lower and more open country. Deprived thus of the 
natural supply of running water, Pompey's soldiers were obliged 
to dig basins or reservoirs in the marshy grounds near the sea ; 
and the water thus gained was not only bad in itself, but quickly 
dried up under the heat of the sun, as the season was now ad- 
vanced to the middle of summer. In addition to this most seveie 
suffering, they were reduced to the greatest want of forage for 
their horses, insomuch that they were obliged to give them leaves 
from the trees, and the roots of reeds, to eke out the supplies 
which they received by sea ; and thus most of the draught ani- 
mals of the army, being less considered than the cavalry'horses, 
died, and the stench of their carcasses in the hot summer weather, 
and in the low and comparatively confined space occupied by the 
troops, produced a considerable effect, we are told, on the health 
of the men. How far Ca?sar may have exaggerated the distress 
which his blockade occasioned to his adversaries, it is not easy 
to decide ; but it is probable that in one respect his views were 
answered, and that Pompey suffered in general estimation, by 
allowing himself, with an unbroken and numerous army, to be 
hemmed in by his antagonist. " He cannot escape with honour," 
says Dolabella in a letter to Cicero,^^^ written about this time from 
Rome, "driven as he has been from Italy; deprived of Spain 
with the loss of a veteran army ; and now even blockaded in his 
camp ; a disgrace which scarcely any other of our commanders 

»» Cffisar, III. 47, 48, 49. 58. '^^ Cicero, ad Familiar, IX. epist. IX. 



POMPEY FORCES CESAR'S LINES. ggX 

has ever endured." Yet Ponipey, it is likely, was daily improv- 
ing the quality of his troops, by exercising them in those partial 
conflicts to which the nature of the operations on both sides con- 
stantly gave occasion ; and it may be conjectured that CsBsar had 
better reasons for praising the patience and fortitude of his sol- 
diers than he chooses to confess ; for every account of these 
transactions dwells upon the distress which they suffered from 
the want of provisions, in a manner not very consistent with Cae- 
sar's statement, that they had every thing in abundance except 
wheaten bread. At length Pompey thought that the Pompey resolves to 

. 1 • , 1 • 1 J. i release himself from 

time was come at which he might act on a more his blockade, 
vigorous system. Whether he was urged, as Caesar says, by the 
distress which he suffered in his present position, or whether he 
wished at last to make some trial of the fitness of his soldiers to 
oppose the enemy in the field, he resolved to break out from his 
confinement, and force a passage through Caesar's lines. Having 
been accurately informed by some deserters of the disposition of 
the enemy's troops,*^^* and of all the defects of their works, par- 
ticularly of the opening left between their first and second line 
near the sea, owing to the unfinished state of the transverse line 
which was intended to connect them together, Pompey prepared 
his plan of attack accordingly. Directing his main effort against 
the weak point of Cassar's works, he assaulted the first line in 
front with his legionary soldiers, whilst he embarked on board 
his small craft a large force of his light infantry, and caused them 
to be landed, some on the outside of the second line to attack it in 
front, and some in the opening between the two lines, where they 
could distract the defenders of both by assailing them in the rear. 
These combined movements were crowned with complete suc- 
cess. The attack was made at daybreak, the lines were forced 
with great slaughter, and Pompey had taken up a new position 
beyond the works which had been constructed with so much la- 
bour to confine him, before Caesar could come up to the support of 
his men from the remote part of his lines in which He forces caesar-e 
he had fixed his usual quarters. When he did ar- ^"^^• 
rive on the spot, and saw that all his plans must at once be 
changed, he gave orders to form a new camp near that of Pom- 
pey. But scarcely was the work completed,^^^ when some of his 
reconnoitering parties brought him word that a portion of the 
enemy's army, apparently amounting to an entire legion, was 
stationed by itself at some distance from its main body, and 
might possibly be cut off by a sudden attack. Eager to retrieve 
the loss which he had sustained in the early part of the day. 
Caesar caught at the chance of success thus held out to him^ and 
advanced with about three legions to assail the single legion 

^* Caesar, 59, et seq. ^^s Caesar, III. 66, et seq. 



292 C^SAR RETREATS FROM DYRRHACHIUM. 

of the enem3^ Bat the ground, it seems, was intersected with 
walls and ditches which had been made in some of the multiplied 
operations of the last few \veeks, and these impediments delayed 
and disarranged the order of the advancing troops, and gave 
Pompey time to come up with a strong reinforcement, Caesar's 
Affair of Dyrrha- soldlers, coufuscd amidst the difficulties of the 
CKs^isdeftaVe'd! grouud, aud now themselves attacked both in front 
and rear, were seized with a panic and fled. In vain did Gsesar 
attempt to stop the rout ; when he caught hold of the coloins 
which the terrified bearers were carrying off in their flight, they 
were thrown away, or left in his grasp ; when he stopped the 
horses of any of his fugitive cavalry, the riders leaped off^ and 
ran away on foot. But the same impediments which had first 
thrown the vanquished party into disorder, obstructed in their 
turn the pursuit of the conquerors ; and Pompey, himself, it is 
said, surprised at his easy victory, suspected that the flight of the 
enemy was counterfeited, in order to draw him into some ambus- 
cade, and accordingly did not press upon them so closely as he 
might have done. Still he had gained a great and decisive ad- 
vantage, for Caesar at once felt that he could not continue the 
campaign on his present ground ; and having brought together all 
his scattered detachments, and abandoned all his lines, he deter- 
mined to retreat from the neighbourhood of Dyrrhachium Avith 
the greatest expedition, and began to concert measures to preserve 
his army during its retreat from the annoyance likely to be oflered 
by the victorious enemy. 

For this purpose he sent off all his baggage with the sick 
c^sar retreat. from ^ud wouudcd iu the c^arly part of the night, under 
Dyrrhachium. (jjg escort of a singlc legion. 2^^ The main body 

of the army commenced its march a little before daybreak, but 
Caesar remained in the camp, with two legions, for some little 
time longer ; and then, after the usual order had been given 
for the soldiers to prepare to march, he set out with the utmost 
expedition and soon overtook the other legions, which had 
already made some progress. The order for marching was gen- 
erally, it appears, conveyed through the camp with consider- 
able noise,^" being notified by repeated calls to get the bag- 
gage together, and thus it might easily be heard by an enemy, 
when posted at the little distance which was customary in Ro- 
man warfare. Pompey, accordingh'^, no sooner heard this sig- 
nal, than he put his own army in motion, supposing that the 
enemy were only then beginning their retreat ; but CaBsar, through 
the precautions which he had employed, was so much in ad- 
vance that he could not be overtaken till he came to the Genusus, 
a river which falls into the sea a little to the south of Dyrrha- 
chium, and whose steep and rocky banks necessarily occasioned 

*»« Caesar, III. 75. «" Csesar, de Bell. Civili, I. 66. 



HE IS PURSUED BY POMPEY WITHOUT EFFECT. 283 

some delay ere the passage of it could be effected. Here Pompey's 
cavalry came up with the rear of the retreating army ; but Caesar 
ordered his own cavalry up to the scene of action, and by sup- 
porting them with a detachment of his light-armed legionary in- 
fantry, enabled them, according to his own account, though 
greatly inferior in numbers, to repulse the enemy with some loss. 
Having thus crossed the Genusus in safety, he led his troops into 
a camp which they had formerly occupied, described before as 
being close to Asparagium,^^^ and which was distant about eight 
miles from the position which they had quitted in the morning.'^'' 
The cavalry were immediately sent out to forage, as if Csesar in- 
tended to halt here for the night ; but they were ordered to re- 
turn quickly to the camp, by the gate furthest removed from the 
enemy, and about noon the order was given to resume the march, 
and the army continued its retreat for eight miles more without 
the least disturbance, Pompey, on his part, had He is pursued by 

. T I • 1 1 * • 1 Pompey without 

occupied his old camp near Asparagium, and con- effect. 
eluding that Cassar would move no further during that day, had 
not only sent out his cavalry as usual to collect wood and forage, 
but had allowed many of the soldiers to return to their position 
of the morning, in order to collect various articles of their bag- 
gage which they had been forced to leave behind when sum- 
moned so suddenly to move in pursuit of Caesar. It was thus 
impossible for him to follow his adversary, and the advance 
which Cassar had gained was so important, that no subsequent 
exertions of Pompey could make up for it. Accordingly, on the 
fourth day he discontinued the pursuit, and Caesar arrived at 
Apollonia without interruption. This town, it seems, was one of 
his most valuable posts,^"" and he had placed there his military 
chest, which he now required for the payment of his soldiers ; he 
judged it also to be the place where he could most securely leave 
behind his wounded ; and for both these reasons he had fixed . 
upon it as his first point of retreat. He had no intention, how- 
ever, to remain there long, as he had decided to move at once 
into Thessaly. Accordingly, having sent orders to Cn. Domitius 
Calvinus, the commander of that part of his army which was in 
Lower Macedonia, to join him as soon as possible, and having 

^'- Caesar, III. 76. rather than advance a few miles at the 
*38 This is spoken of as a clay's march, price of having to undergo the whole la- 
although it was completed some time be- hour of raising the customary works for 
fore noon, and the distance seems very in- itself. The passage of the Genusus, more- 
considerable. It should be remembered, over, was probably more fatiguing than a 
however, that it was now midsummer, a march of some length over a plain coun- 
season at which it would be desirable, in try ; and the armies had both moved at an 
the climate of Greece, to avoid marching unusual pace during the whole day ; so 
in the heat of the day ; and, besides, the that altogether it was not unnatural to 
circumstance of finding a camp ready suppose that Caesar might really intend ' 
formed, would be a reason why the army to halt in his camp at Asparagium. 
should halt a little sooner than usual, ^°° Ceesar, III. 78. 



284 C^SAR MARCHES INTO THESSALY. 

left garrisons at Apollonia, Lissus, and Oriciim, to facilitate his 
communications with Italy, he set out once more to commence 
what may be called a new campaign ; and turning aside from the 
coast, he commenced his march towards the interior of the coun- 
try, through Epirus and Athamania.^"' 

The final success of Csesar at Pharsalia, ought not so far to 
impose upon us as to prevent us from seeing that his plans, up to 
the moment of his retreat from Dyrrhachium, had entirely failed. 
He resolves to march ^^^^ that Pompcy's coufidence in the wisdom of his 
intoThessaiy. qwu systcm had hitherto been fully justified. By 

exposing his soldiers gradually in partial encounters, and under 
favourable circumstances, he had enabled them to meet and to 
vanquish Caesar's veterans ; while Csesar, after undergoing a series 
of labours for the purpose of tempting his adversary to fight, and 
having seen the patience of his troops tried to the utmost from 
the want of provisions arising from the enemy's naval superiority, 
had imposed all this suffering upon them without deriving the 
least benefit from it ; and when at last he did meet Pompey in 
battle, he was beaten and obliged to change his whole plan of the 
campaign. But although he had thus been hatfled, he allowed 
no signs of dejection nor of a sense of difficulty to appear in his 
conduct. He had so artfully soothed the vanity of his soldiers 
by extenuating their defeatj^*"^ and imputing it to any cause 
rather than to a want of courage or zeal on their part, that the 
men were less dismayed than irritated by their disaster ; and feel- 
ing grateful to their general for the kindness of his behaviour 
towards them, they were impatient for an opportunity of retrieving 
their disgrace, and of proving to him that his confidence in them 
had not been bestowed unworthily. The success with which 
the retreat to Apollonia had been conducted, was likely to lessen 
Hi? reasons lor so their imprcssiou of the events at Dyrrhachium ; and 
^°'"e- they now had the prospect of resuming at once the 

offensive, of drawing away the enemy from the neighbourhood of 

"" The reading in the only two editions clear and correct. See also Strabo, VII. 

of Caesar which we have consulted, (nei- 378, and IX. 491. Plutarch also says, 

ther of tliem, it must be confessed, of any expressly , eiSdSi^e 6t' ^AOafuwui' as OcrrnAiai'. 

great value, or of recent date,) is " Acar- in Pompcio, 66. Another blunder occurs 

nania ;" " per Epirum atque Arcarnaniam in the very next chapter in the same edi- 

iter facere coepit," 78. It is evident that tions of Caesar,where the Heraclen, through 

Caesar could not march through Acarita- which Pompey passed, is called Heraclea 

nia; but Athamanin i.s the name of that Sentica. Ilcraclea Sentica, or Sintica, 

wild mountain region which lies between was near the eastern frontier of Macedo- 

Epirus and Thessaly,and which immedi- nia, between the Strymon and the Axius ; 

ately overhangs tlie valley in which Gom- Vid. Livy, XLV. 29 ; but the Heraclea, 

phi stands. Vid. Livy, XXXI. 41. " Im- through which Pompey passed, was on the 

minct Althamania huic urbi ;" sc. Gomphis. western frontier, and was, in fact, situated 

It should be remembered, that in the part on the Ignatian way, at the eastern foot 

of his history from which these words are of the Candavian mountains. Vid. Strabo, 

quoted, Livy, has so generally copied VII. 374. 

Polybius, that his geography is unusually ^'" Caesar, III. 73, 74. 



HIS REASONS FOR SO DOING. 285 

the sea, which had hitherto given him so great an advantage, and 
of enjoying the suppUes which the approaching harvest promised 
them in the rich and comparatively un wasted plains of Thessaly. 
Still, however, the utmost expedition was necessary ; for it was 
not to be doubted that Pompey, after having ceased to pursue 
Cassar, would at once march into Macedonia by that great and 
direct communication called the Ignatian way,^"^ which, as we 
have already mentioned, crossed the whole country from Dyrrha- 
chium on the Ionian gulf, to Thessalonica on the iEgean sea. 
Whichever general should first arrive to support his officer who 
commanded in Lower Macedonia, was likely to gain an import- 
ant advantage by overwhelming the detachment of the enemy; 
and thus, whilst Pompey was hastening to join Scipio, Caesar was 
equally anxious to unite his army with that of Cn. Domitius. 

Cn. Domitius Calvinus had been consul with M. Messala dur- 
ing the latter part of the year 700, after the long interregnum 
which lasted through all the earlier months of it. He was then 
reputed a partisan of the aristocracy, but was implicated, while a 
candidate, in that corrupt agreement with the consuls of the pre- 
ceding year which forms so remarkable an instance of audacious 
profligacy.^"* Such a man had probably little to guide him, ex- 
cept his interest or his passions ; and accordingly he was now 
an officer under Caesar, and had been sent into Macedonia some 
time before with two legions, to gain, if possible, that important 
province. ^°^ Here he had been opposed to Scipio, who had just 
brought with him from Asia an army of nearly equal force ; and 
as Scipio imitated the policy of Pompey and declined an action, 
the two armies lay opposite to one another for some time on the 
banks of the Haliacmon, without engaging in any affair of im- 
portancCo . It seems, however, that this system of warfare Avas 
as annoying to Caesar's lieutenants as to himself, for we find that 
Cn. Domitius, having exhausted the resources of the country im- 
mediately around him, was obliged to change his position, and 
had mcfved towards Heraclea,^*'^ a town situated on the Ignatian 
way, and at the eastern foot of the Candavian mountains, which 
are the central chain from whence the streams flow eastward to 
the ^gean, and westward to the Ionian gulf. This movement 
took place exactly at the time that Pompey was marching to join 
Scipio ; and as Heraclea was one of the towns through which 
his road lay, he would have cut off Domitius and his troops with- 
out difficulty, had they not escaped in the utmost haste only four 
hours before his arrival. The news of Caesar's defeat at Dyr- 
rhachium, exaggerated as usual by report, had produced every 
where a strong sensation ; and the people of the country, con- 

=»»» Strabo,VII. 374, edit. Xyland. ^05 Cssar, III. 34. 

3W Vide p 216. • ^w c^aar, 79. Strabo, VII. 374. 



286 C^SAR SUBDUES MOST OF THE THESSALIAN TOWNS. 

sidering his cause desperate, hoped to recommend themselves to" 
the conqueror, by cutting off his communications, and practising 
against him all those desultory modes of annoyance which a re- 
treating or beaten army is so apt to suffer from such hands. For 
a long time, therefore, neither Cassar nor Domitius could receive 
He joins cn. Domi- ^-"7 intelligence from each other ; but at last Domi- 
on'ihe~\ioaS"of ^i^^^j havlug Icamt at once the march of Csesar to- 
Thessaiy. wards Thcssaly, and his own danger from the 

advance of Pompey, fell back southwards with all his haste, and 
met Csesar at ^ginium,^" a town of considerable natural strength, 
standing amongst the mountains of Athamania, which immedi- 
ately overhang the plains of Thessaly. Scipio, who had, perhaps, 
been earlier informed of the approaching change of the seat of 
war, left the banks of the Haliacmon, and stationed himself at 
Larissa, on the Peneus, one of the principal cities of Thessaly, 
and which it was of importance to lose no time in securing. As 
for the detachment which had been sent by Csesar into Thessaly 
while he was himself opposed to Pompey near Dyrrhachium,^"^ 
it had been driven out of the country by Scipio, just before Cn. 
Domitius began to engage the whole attention of that officer in 
Macedonia ; so that Caesar, when he arrived at ^ginium, had 
nothing else to trust to for a favourable reception except the affec- 
tions of the Thessalians themselves, and those, he tells us, had 
been greatly alienated by the exaggerated reports which prevailed 
of the desperate situation of his affairs. 

On descending from ^Eginium into the plain of Thessaly, the 
He takes Gomphi, ^^'s^ towu of importaucc on the line of Caesar's 
of^hl"'ThIL!Jid march was Gomphi.3''9 He found the gates shut 
iS'*the''"pia"inrof agalust him, ahhongh he tells us that the citizens 
pharsaiia. j^g^j gQj-,^ jq j^jj^ somc time bcforc to offer him their 

services, and to invite him to garrison their citj^. But when he 
represented to his soldiers the importance of striking terror into 
the Thessalians by vigorously chastising this first act of hostility, 
and encouraged them by promises of the plunder of a y^ealthy 
town, they were animated with such a spirit that they scaled the 
walls within three or four hours after their arrival before the 
place, and sacked the town with all the eagerness of men who 
had been long unused to every indulgence. The example, how- 
ever, produced the desired effect. Metropolis, the next place on 
the army's route, submitted at once ; and here, as a contrast to 
the fate of Gomphi, the soldiers were forced to observe the greatest 
forbearance. With such a lesson before their eyes, the other 
towns of Thessaly followed generally the behaviour of the peo- 
ple of Metropolis, so that Caesar rapidly advanced, till he found 

307 Cffisar, 79. Livy, XXXI. 41; ^oa Cffisar,36. 
XXXII. •ft. 309 CiEsar, 80. 



CONFIDENCE OF POMPEY'S ARMY. 287 

himself in the midst of a country covered with crops of corn 
almost ready for harvest,^'" where he determined to await the ap- 
proach of Pompey, and again, if possible, try the fortune of a 
battle. His camp was pitched a few miles to the south of La- 
rissa, at no great distance from the right bank of the river Enipeus, 
in the ever-memorable plains of Pharsalus or Pharsalia. 

Meanwhile the victory of Dyrrhachium and the retreat of 
Caesar had produced a fatal effect on the mind of confidence of pom- 
Pompey, and made him less firm in resisting the ^^^'^ ^'^^y- 
rash and violent counsels of his officers. His soldiers had saluted 
him with the title of imperator on the field of battle, a name 
usually given in this manner by an army to its victorious gen- 
eral, and expressive of the sense entertained by his troops of the 
greatness of his success. But it is mentioned, that although 
Pompey adopted the title thus conferred on him,^^^ he abstained 
from the general custom of wreathing his fasces, or surrounding 
his letters with laurel ; implying that he intended to claim no tri- 
umph for a victory gained over his own countrymen. His gen- 
erals immediately began to propose various plans for the future 
operations of the army. L. Afranius (who had brought with him 
from Spain a part of the troops which he had formerly com- 
manded there,^'^ having enlisted, perhaps afresh, some of those 
soldiers who had been discharged according to the capitulation 
granted them by Caesar) strongly urged that Pompey should avail 
himself of the first renown of his victory,^^^ and should transport 
his army at once into Ital^ that he might thus easily recover the 
seat of government, and might deprive his adversary of the re- 
sources which he now drew from Sicily, Sardinia, Gaul, and 
Spain. But Pompey replied, that he would never consent to ex- 
pose Italy and Rome itself to the miseries of war ; that besides, 
by leaving Greece at this moment he abandoned Scipio and his 
two legions to certain destruction ; whereas, by effecting a junc- 
tion with him, he might reasonably hope to complete the work 
which they had so well begun, and might return to Rome within 
a short period, without leaving behind them any cause for appre- 
hension or future anxiety. It is said that some of the members 
of the high aristocratical party were in the habit of reproaching 
Pompey for his procrastinating system of warfare,^" and accused 
him of wishing to protract the contest, that he might the longer 
enjoy the distinction of seeing the flower of the nobility of Rome 
obeying him as their commander-in-chief But his policy was so 
evidently wise, that, inclined as he was to defer too much to pub- 
lic opinion, he yet persevered in his own plans till after the battle 

s'o Caesar, 81. =*" Piut^j^jj j^ po^jpeio, 66. Appian, 

3»> CsBsar, 71. II. 65. 

"'^ Cffisar, 88. ^'^ Plutarch, in Pompeio, 67. Appian, 

II. 67. Ceesar, 82. 



288 C^SAR OFFERS POMPEY BATTLE. 

of Dyrrhachium. The unexpected panic which he had on that 
occasion witnessed among Cassar's veterans, inchned him, per- 
haps, to think that he had judged too highly of their superiority ; 
while his confidence in his own soldiers would be proportionably 
raised. He thought that his long course of cautious training had 
at last been brought to perfection ; and that with a more numerous 
army, now flushed with victory, and a very superior cavalry, he 
need not fear to face his enemy in the field. This feeling was 
heightened when he found that the plains of Thessaly were to 
become the scene of the contest ; for on no ground could his cav- 
alry act with more advantage ; and we are told that he placed 
his main reliance on that part of his forces.^'^ g^t be this as it 
may, he set out with the bulk of his army to follow Caesar, as we 
have already related, having left fifteen cohorts at Dyrrhachium, 
under the command of M. Cato, to secure his magazines in that 
town.^^^ Two other distinguished individuals remained also at 
Dyrrhachium, and thus were not present at the battle of Phar- 
salia ; M. Varro, who had been lately one of Pompey's lieutenants 
in Spain, and who was accounted the most learned Roman of his 
time ; and M. Cicero, who, though warmly attached to Pompey 
himself, was disgusted at the language and conduct of some of 
his principal officers, and was, probably, not sorry for the indis- 
position which, according to Plutarch, 3"' prevented him from 
taking a more active part in the contest. He had always been 
anxious for peace, and had left Italy iu the preceding summer, 
and joined Pompey in Greece more out of personal friendship to 
him, and a regard to his own character, than from any ardent 
zeal in the quarrel, or still less from an approbation of the manner 
in which it was conducted. 

Pompejr, on his arrival in Thessaly, formed a junction with 
Scipio's army, and then advanced and pitched his camp at no 
great distance from that of Caesar. He was abundantly supplied 
with provisions from the sea, and from the country in his rear, 
while Caesar could command only the resources of that part of 
Thessaly which was in his own immediate occupation ; and 
these, though plentiful at present, must of necessity be soon ex- 
hausted. Caesar, therefore, lost no time in oftering battle to his 
antagonist ; but this was for some days declined ; and Pompey, 
though he drew his troops out in order, yet kept them so near to 
the protection of their camp, that Caesar could not venture to at- 
tack him.^'^ There was still, perhaps, a struggle in Pompey's 
mind between his own better judgment and his deference to the 
wishes, or rather the clamours, of his generals, combined with 
that confidence in his strength with which his late victory had 

"» Cffisar, 86. ="' In Cicerone, 39. 

3'8 Cicero, de Divinatione, I. 31. Flu- ^is Csesar, de Bello Civili, III. 85. 
tarch, in Catone, 55. 



DISPOSITION OF THE TWO ARMIES. 289 

inspired him. At length CsBsar resolved to change his ground, 
calculating, he tells us, that by moving often from place to place, 
he should be able to subsist his troops more readily,^ '^ and if he 
was pursued, might have some opportunity of forcing the enemy 
to an engagement during the march. Besides, he still looked 
upon Pompey's soldiers as raw levies in comparison with his own 
practised veterans, and hoped to weary out their spirits and pa- 
tience by harassing them incessantly, and keeping them in con- 
tinual motion. But when the order for marching had been ac- 
tually given, when the tents were already struck, and the troops 
were moving out of the gates of the camp, word pompey is persuaded 
was brought that the enemy was formed in line of to hazard a battle. 
battle at a greater distance from his intrenchments than usual, as 
if disposed to venture an action on equal terms. Immediately 
the march was stopped, the red ensign, or signal of battle, was 
displayed at the general's quarters,^^" and the soldiers, freed from 
the load which they were accustomed to carry when marching, 
were instantly led out into the plain equipped merely for battle, 
and were drawn up in front of the enemy. 

The engagements of modern warfare cannot be understood 
without an exact knowledge not only of the grand- Dispo3iti9n of the 
er features of the scene of action, but even of two armies. 
the minutest details of its hills, valleys, streams, woods, roads, 
villages, and insulated houses. A space of several miles is occu- 
pied by the contending armies, and a battle is for the most part a 
game of positions, in which the carrying one important point 
renders the retreat of the enemy a matter of necessity. Generals, 
therefore, are obliged to calculate time and distance, with the ut- 
most exactness, as success will depend on the combined move- 
ments of different bodies of men acting out of sight of one another, 
and over a wide extent of country ; and meeting with obstacles 
of a very unequal nature in their respective operations. But in 
ancient times, the great battles, which decided the fate of a cam- 
paign or a war, were conducted on a much more simple system. 
The two parties descended, as by agreement, into a wide field for 
action ; both were drawn up in parallel lines, and there decided 
the contest by hard fighting, man to man, with seldom any other 
attempts at manoeuvring, than those made by either army to turn 
the flank of its antagonist. In this manner, Ceesar and Pompey 
met in the plains of Pharsalia. Their lines fronted one another 
in the usual order of battle ; the right flank of Pompey's army, 
and the left of Cassar's, were covered by the river Enipeus, whose 
banks were steep and broken ;^^^ while Pompey had stationed 
his whole cavalry on his left, at once to cover that extremity of 

319 Ceesar, 85. "i Q^gg^r^ m. 88. 

^'"' Plutarch, in Pompeio, 68. 



290 BATTLE OP PHARSALIA. 

his own line, and to turn the wing of the enemy. To obviate 
this, Caesar formed a reserve of six cohorts, which he had drafted 
from the legions of his third Une, and placed them on his right, 
behind his own cavalry, ready to present a front and to charge 
the cavalry of the enemy so soon as they should prepare to ex- 
ecute their intended mancEuvre. He, himself, besides, took his 
station on the right of his line, at the head of the tenth legion, 
the most distinguished body of troops in his army ; while Pom- 
pey, equally aware that this would be the most important point 
in the field, placed himself on his own left wing, at the head of 
the two legions which had formerly belonged to Ccesar, and which 
had been recalled from his army in Gaul, as we have already seen, 
a httle before the beginning of the war. The irumbers on each 

side are, as usual, uncertain ; the writer of the 
eirnumers. "Commentaries" (for the more we read them the 
less can we persuade ourselves to consider Caesar as their author, 
although, to avoid circumlocutiou, we often speak of them as his 
work,) states the amount of Pompey's infantry at 45,000, and that 
of Caesar's at 22,000.^^^ In cavalry, Pompey's superiority is made 
•out to be still greater ; he had 7000 men, and Caesar, only 1000.^^3 
Appian, also, without referring directly to the " Commentaries," 
gives exactly the same numbers, following, he says, the most 
credible authorities on the subject f^* but he mentions several 
other statemgits, some representing the disparity between the two 
armies to have been greater, and others to have been less than he 
has recorded. The auxiliary troops on both sides were very nu- 
merous but their exact amount, says Appian, is not known ; be- 
cause the Romans considered the foreign part of their forces as of 
little importance. Almost every province of the empire had given 
assistance to one or other of the two antagonists ; and it was on 
the foreign troops in Pompey's army that Caesar ordered his sol- 
diers jto glut their fmy, while he commanded them to spare all 
who were Romans, as soon as they should cease to resist. Yet 
it was the most beneficial result of Caesar's final victory, that the 
distinction between the Italians and the inhabitants of other parts 
of the empire was gradually lessened, till it was at last removed 
altogether. And although, to effect this equality, Rome was 
somewhat degraded, as well as the provinces raised, yet the gen- 
eral interests of mankind were promoted by the change, inas- 
much as a larger portion of it became admitted to that rank and 
that civil condition which were the highest and most desirable 
existing at the time in the world. 

The signal for attack was first given by Cassar;"^ and his 

soldiers rushed forward to the onset. But finding 
Battle of Pharsaiia. ^^^^ ^^^ eucmy did not advance to meet them, and 

322 Caesar. III. 88, 89. 324 Appian, II. 70. 

M3 Csesar, 84. 32S Csesar, 90. 92. Floras, IV. 2. 



BATTLE OF PHARSALIA. 291 

fearing to exhaust their strength before they closed, they hahed, 
of their own accord, for a few minutes, in the middle of their 
course, to recover their breath ; and then, renewing their charge, 
they launched their javelins against the adverse ranks, and in- 
stantly drawing their swords, engaged the enemy hand to hand. 
The soldiers of the commonwealth received the attack with cool- 
ness, and the action soon became general ; when the cavalry,^'^® 
which was stationed on the left of Pompey's line, moved forward 
to charge Caesar's right, accompanied by all the light troops, which 
formed a numerous body. Caesar's cavalry, unable to stand the 
attack, was presently beaten ; and the victorious cavalry of Pom- 
pey were beginning to fall on the defenceless flank of the line of 
infantry, when the reserve of six cohorts, or about 3000 men, which 
Ccesar had formed for this very purpose, suddenly advanced ; and 
without waiting to receive the charge of the cavalry, itself charged 
them with great impetuosity. Pompey's cavalry, as we have 
seen, consisted mainly of foreigners, and those of many different 
nations.^^'' iStartled, therefore, at this unexpected attack, afraid 
of the high courage and discipline of Caesar's regular infantry, 
galled by the terrible discharge of the javelins, and perhaps, in; 
some disorder at the moment from not having completed the ma- 
noeuvre in which they were engaged, the soldiers on whom Pom- 
pey had placed his chief dependence were seized with a shameful 
panic, and fled.^^^ The light troops, abandoned to their fate, were 
instantly cut to pieces ; and the reserve, still pushing its success, 
fell upon the flank and rear of the line of Pompey's infantry, which 
was at that moment warmly engaged in front with the best troops 
in Caesar's army, the famous tenth legion. At the same instant 
Caesar brought up the third line of his army, which had not hith- 
erto been engaged f^^ and the arrival of a fresh force at once over- 
powered the resistance of the enemy ; who, wearied with a long 
contest already, and attacked at once in front and in rear, were 
unable to withstand this third attack, and broke and fled. The 
impression communicated itself rapidly, and the whole line of 
Pompey's infantry began to give ground. Still, however, they 
disputed the approach towards their camp ; when Caesar issued 
the order to give quarter to all Roman citizens, and only to kill 
the foreign auxiliaries.^^" Many of the legionary soldiers instant- 
ly embraced the safety thus offered to them, while the auxiliaries, 
deserted by the most effective part of the array, were slaughtered 

326 Caesar, III. 93,94. advanced, were beaten off and fled, leav- 

32T Caesar, III. 4. Confer. Lucan, ing the artillery and infantry to their fate. 

Pharsalia, VII. 521, et seq. And it is remarkable, that, till then, the 

328 The reader will recollect the similar cavalry had been regarded as the particular 

circumstances which occasioned the dis- kind of force v^'hich was likely to be most 

graceful rout of Preston Pans in the rebel- eflicacious against the Highlanders. 

lion of 1745. The dragoons, who were 329 Caesar, 94. 

ordered to charge the Highlanders as they 330 Appian, II, 80. 



292 DEFEAT OF POMPEY. 

without difficulty and without mercy. In this man- 
Defeat of pompey. ,1 ■' • 1 i -r* 1 

ner the conquerors soon arrived at Fompey's camp, 

which they proceeded to storm, and carried it after a brief but sharp 
resistance from some Thracians and other auxiharies who had 
been stationed to defend the rampart.^^^ From the camp the fu- 
gitives fled in a body to some very high ground, which rose imme- 
diately behind it j^^^ and Cassar having authority enough to call off 
his soldiers from the spoil that was lying before them, instantly 
followed to complete his victory.^^^ But the enemy finding that 
their position was destitute of water, abandoned it, and continued 
their retreat towards Larissa. Caesar still pursued them with a 
part of his forces, having left the other part to secure his own camp, 
and that which he had just taken from the enemy. The fugitives, 
finding that he was gaining ground upon them by moving on a 
more practicable road, halted again on another height, which had a 
stream flowing at its foot. Night was coming on, and the exer- 
tions of the day had almost exhausted both parties ; but Caesar 
encouraged his men to make one effort more, and to raise works 
between the hill and the stream, that the enemy might not supply 
themselves with water diuing the night. His wish was accom- 
plished ; and the unfortunate fugitives, exposed to all the horrors 
of thirst after a day of intense fatigue, and at the hottest season of 
the year, sent some of their number to offer an immediate surren- 
der.^^^ Some senators, it is said, who were on the hill, not choosing 
to submit to Caesar, escaped during the night ; but the rest of the 
Surrender of a large fugitivcs, as soou as moming cauic, wcrc ordered to 
portion of his army, comc dowu liito tlic plalu aud give up their arms; 
after which their lives were granted to them; and in the cruelty 
of ancient warfare they had reason to congratulate themselves on 
their fortune, in being preserved alike from massacre and frorri 

331 Caesar, 95. compter sur vous V — Memoires de Napo- 

332 Caesar, 95. 97. leon, I. 91. 

333 It was on this occasion that Caesar 334 Pompey was murdered the day be- 
exclaimed, in the hearing of Asinius Pol- fore his birthday ; that is, according to 
lio, upon witnessing the total defeat of the Phny, Histor. Natural. XXXVII. 2, on 
commonwealth's army, " Hoc voluerunt : the 29th of September, which, allowing 
tantis rebus gestis C. Caesar condemnatus for the disordered state of the Roman cal- 
essem.nisi ab exercituauxilium petiissem." ender at this time, was really about one of 
The words of Napoleon Buonaparte were the latter days of July. Consequently the 
in the same spirit when he was exciting battle of Pharsalia must have been fought 
the indignation of his soldiers against the about the beginning or middle of July ; 
Jacobin members of the Council of Five but we have found no record of the pre- 
Hundred, on the memorable 19th Bru- cise day, and indeed one might imagine, 
maire, (lOth November, 1799.) " J"allais from some words of Lucan, that it was not 
leur faire connaitre les moyens de sauver exactly known even in his time. He 
la republique, et de nous rendre notre says — 

gloire. lis m'ont repondu a coups de po- " Tempora signavit leviorum Roma ma- 

ignard. lis voulaient ainsi realiser le de- lorum, 

eir des rois coalises. Qu'aurait pu faire Hunc voluit nescire diem." 

de plus I'Angleterre .' Soldats, puis-je Phars. VII. 410. 



PERSONAL ADVENTURES OF POMPEY. 393 

slavery. The indefatigable conqueror, having thus completed the 
destruction of the enemy's army, ordered the legions which he had 
with him to be relieved by those which, on the preceding afternoon, 
he had sent back to the camp, and then continuing his advance, 
he reached Larissa on that day, and entered it without resistance. 
Such was the battle of Pharsaha. It is needless to inquire 
what was the number of the slain on the part of the vanquished, 
or of the conqueror ; for a victory so complete is to be estimated 
rather by its results, than by the immediate slaughter in the field ; 
and where the empire of the world was lost and won, no subor- 
dinate considerations could aggravate the defeat, nor materially 
lessen the joy of the victory. L. Domitius, who had been named 
by the senate at the beginning of the war as Csesar's successor in 
Gaul, was killed in the pursuit i^^s ^p Labienus and L. Afranius 
had escaped to Dyrrhachium ; whilst P. Lentulus, L. Lentulus, 
the late consul, Scipio, and Pompey the 'Great himself, were seek- 
ing shelter and protection from foreigners. But the fortunes of 
Pompey deserve to be traced more particularly. When he saw 
his cavalry defeated,^^* and the reserve of Cassar's personal adventures 
six cohorts threatening to surround that part of his °^ Pompey. 
line in which he had taken his place, it is agreed that he instant- 
ly left the field, and rode back to his camp. As he entered the 
gates, he addressed himself to the centurions who were stationed 
there on guard, charging them to do their duty in defending the 
camp, if it should be needful, and adding, " that he was going to 
visit the other gates, and to increase the guards at every point." 
Yet we are told that he went directly to his own tent, and there 
remained as if stupified, till he found that the enemy had already 
forced their way into his intrenchments. We find, indeed, that 
when he saw his cavalry routed, he suspected that he was betray- 
ed ; and this feeling, working vaguely on his mind, was likely, 
above all others, to make him helpless and irresolute. Yet, if he 
were afraid of treason in the field, it was,"perhaps, his wisest plan 
to retire to his camp, and endeavour to secure that at least from the 
enemy : and his subsequent flight did not take place till all hope 
of resistance had clearly vanished. Then he changed his dress, 
and withdrawing from the camp by the back gate, he rode off", 
attended by about thirty horsemen, amongst whom were Publius 
and Lucius Lentulus, and M. Favonius,^" the friend and professed 
imitator of Cato. He fled first to Larissa, but did not halt there ; 
and thence continuing his flight during the whole night, he reached 
the sea at the mouth of the Peneus, and was there taken on board 
a small trading vessel, which happened to be passing by the coast. 
At first he bent his course towards the mouth of the Strymon,^*' 

335 Caesar, III. 99. Cicero, de Divina- 33^ Velleiua Paterculus, II. 53. 
done, I. 31. Dion Cassius, XLII. 190. ^^ Csesar, III. 102. 

336 Caesar, III. 94. 96. 



294 PERSONAL ADVENTURES OF POMPEY. 

and lay there at anchor for one night, in order to learn the state 
of his affiiiirs ; but finding them desperate, and having procured a 
supply of money from his friends at Amphipolis, he crossed over 
to Mitylene, in Lesbos, where he had left his wife, Cornelia, and 
his younger son, Sextus.^^^ The purity and tenderness of Pom- 
pey's private character, rendered his meeting with his family par- 
ticularly atlectionate. Cornelia had heard no tidings of the war 
since the exaggerated reports which she had received of her hus- 
band's success at Dyrrhachium ; his arrival, therefore, as a fugitive, 
was a shock for which she was wholly unprepared. She joined 
him on board his vessel immediately ; for he would not go on 
shore, although warmly invited by the Mitylenseans to do so, and 
although he was detained by contrary winds for two days off the 
harbour. He would not, he said, expose his friends to the resent- 
ment of the conqueror, by availing himself of their kindness ; but 
recommended them to submit to Cassar, adding, that they would 
find him disposed to be merciful. But being here joined by some 
other small vessels, he sailed to the southward, hoping to make a 
stand in the southern part of Asia Minor, or in Syria ; and trusting 
that at that distance he might rally his navy, and with the assist- 
ance of the eastern provinces again renew the contest. The effect 
of the battle of Pharsalia, however, was rapidly felt in every 
quarter. Rhodes,^" which still retained some part of its old naval 
renown, and which had contributed a squadron to Pompey's fleet, 
now refused to admit the fugitives within its ports ; and Pompey, 
mortified at this first check to his hopes, continued his voyage 
along the coast as far as Cilicia, without meeting any where with 
any decided encouragement or support. His views were now 
turned, it is said, towards Syria. That province was still, by law, 
subject to the government of his father in-law, Scipio, and its own 
resources might be powerfully supported by the arms of Parthia ; 
a power to which Pompey was inclined to look for assistance in 
this extremity of fortune. But when he arrived at Paphos, in Cy- 
prus, he learnt that Antioch, the capital of Syria, had declared 
against him f*^ that the citadel of that place had been secured for 
the very purpose of excluding him ; and that the citizens had given 
notice that none of the fugitives of Pompey's party should be al- 
lowed to enter their territories. There was no hope then of renew- 
ing the v\"ar in Syria ; and Pompey was strongly advised not to 
take refuge at the comt of Parthia f^^ a place the least calculated 
to offer an honourable protection to a Roman lad}^, who was now 
the wife of Pompey, and whose first husband had been the son of 
Crassus. It was then suggested that he should retire to Africa, 
where the friendship of Juba and the triumphant state of his party 

339 Flutarcli, in Pompeio, 74. ^^ Cicero, Philippic. II. 15. Csesar, 102. 

340 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. cpist. ^~ Plutarch, in PompeiOj 76. 
XIV. Csesar, III. 102. 



HE SEEKS AN ASYLUM IN EGYPT. 395 

seemed naturally to invite him. But this plan he declined, and, in 
an evil hour, resolved to throw himself on the gratitude of the king 
of Egypt. The present sovereign was a mere boy ; He resolves to seek an 
but his father had owed the recovery of his kingdom, asylum m Egypt. 
as we have seen, to Pompey's influence ; and this, it was hoped, 
would now insure a hospitable reception from the son. Pompey 
accordingly sailed to Pelusium;^*^ and, before he landed, he sent 
a message to the young king, to request an asylum at Alexan- 
dria, and assistance for himself and his friends in their distress. It 
happened that Ptolemy then lay with an army on the most eastern 
boundary of Egypt, in order to repel an expected invasion from 
his sister, the famous Cleopatra, who, having been left by her 
father's will joint heir of the kingdom with her brother, had been 
since expelled by him, and was now endeavouring, with some aid 
which she had procured in Syria, to effect her restoration, Pom- 
pey's messenger, accordingly, found the king near Mount Casius, 
some miles to the eastward of Pelusium ; and having discharged 
his commission, was sent back with a kind answer, and an invi- 
tatidh to Pompey to join the king immediately. But Ptolemy had 
at this time in his service a number of Roman soldiers, who, 
having belonged to that army with which Gabinius had restored 
the late king to his throne, had since chosen to remain in Egypt, 
and to transfer their obedience to a new master. Gabinius had 
been raised entirely by Pompey's influence, and many ot his sol- 
diers had served against the pirates, or against Mithridates, and 
might thus be supposed to retain some respect and affection for 
Pompey, their old and most illustrious commander. As a Roman 
proconsul, Pompey would little hesitate to recall these men to his 
own standard ; and as the Roman people had been named by the 
late king as his executors, their officer might interfere, more than 
Ptolemy wished, in the quarrels of the royal family, and might 
even attempt to dispose of all the resources of Egypt by his own 
authority. The king's council, therefore, resolved to tempt Pom- 
pey into their power, and to murder him ; an act by which they 
hoped to merit the favour of Ceesar, while they freed themselves 
from a guest who might, if once admitted, become too powerful to 
be dismissed or to be resisted. 

At Cyprus ^^^ Pompey had supplied himself with money from 
the funds of the farmers of the revenue, and from 
the contributions of some private individuals ; he ^^ "^ murdered. 
had also raised, as we are told, about 2000 men, chiefly from the 
large slave establishments belonging to different persons in the 
island ; and with this force, having been joined besides by several 
senators from different quarters, he had crossed over to the coast 
of Egypt. The whole of his little squadron followed him from. 

3« Plutarch, 77. Caesar, 103. 3^4 Caesar, 103. Plutarch, 78, 79. 

20 



296 POMPEY IS MURDERED. 

Peliisium, when he went to meet the king ; and on board of his 
own ship, as we have ah'eady mentioned, Aveve his wife Corneha, 
and his son Sextus. As he came near Mount Casius, the Egyp- 
tian army was seen on the shore, and their fleet lying off at some 
distance, when presently a boat was observed approaching the 
ship from the land ; and it was soon found to contain one of the 
king's chief officers, a man of the name of Achillas, attended by 
two or three other persons of inferior rank. Among these was 
a Roman, named L. Septimius, who had served as a centurion 
imder Pompey in the war with the pirates, and who, when the 
boat came near the ship, addressed his old general in Latin, by 
the title of Imperator, while Achillas, saluting him courteously in 
Greek, invited him to enter the boat, informing him that there was 
not water enough near the shore for a vessel of any burden. The 
king himself, ^^^ and a group of his principal officers, were at this 
tirne seen on the shore, as if waiting to bid their illustrious guest 
welcome ; and Pompey accordingly descended into the boat, ac- 
companied by two centurions, by one of his freedmen, and by a 
single slave. As the party were borne towards the land, Poiftpey 
is said to have recognised L. Septimius, and to have observed to 
him, " that he thought they must have formerly served together ;" 
to Avhich Septimius answered by a mere movement of assent. No 
one seemed willing to break the silence, upon which Pompey took 
out an outline of a Greek address which he had intended to de- 
liver on his introduction to the king, and amused himself with 
reading it. At last the boat touched the shore, and several of 
Ptolemy's officers crowded down to the water's edge as if to receive 
Pompey immediately on his landing. He rose from his seat, and 
leaning on his freed man's arm, was in the act of stepping on shore, 
when L. Septimius stabbed him in the back, and instantl)'', on this 
signal, Achillas and his Egyptian soldiers drew their swords to 
complete the work. It is said that Pompey did not utter a single 
cry, but folding his gown over his face, received the blows of his 
assassins without attempting to resist or to escape. As soon as the 
murder was finished, his head was cut off and embalmed, in order 
to be presented to Caesar, and his body was cast out carelessly 
and left upon the beach. His freedman lingered near it, till the 
crowd was dispersed, and then burnt it on a rude funeral pile of 
such broken pieces of wood as he found scattered along the 
shore, assisted, as it is said, by an old Roman soldier, now in 
the Egyptian service, and who remembered that Pompey the 
Great had once been his general. Cornelia and her friends, who 
saw the murder committed, instantly put to sea and escaped the 
pursuit of the Egyptian fleet, which at first threatened to intercept 
them. Their feelings, as is natural, were for the moment so en- 

3*s Appian, Bell. Civili, II. 84. Plutarch, ubi supra. Ctesar, 104. 



\ 



CHARACTER OF POMPEY. 291 

grossed by their own danger, that they could scarcely comprehend 
the full extent of their loss,^^« nor was it till they reached the port 
of Tyre in safety, that grief succeeded to apprehension, and they 
began to understand what cause they had for sorrow. 

But the tears that were shed for Pompey were not only those 
of domestic affliction ; his fate called forth a more 
general and honourable mourning. No man had aracterofPompey. 
ever gained, at so early an age, the affections of his countrymen ; 
none had enjoyed them so largely, or preserved them so long with 
so little interruption ; and at the distance of eighteen centuries the 
feeling of his contemporaries may be sanctioned by the sober 
judgment of history. He entered upon public life as a distinguish- 
ed member of an oppressed party which was just arriving at its 
hour of triumph and retaliation ; he saw his associates plunged 
in rapine and massacre, but he preserved himself pure from the 
contagion of their crimes ; and when the death of Sylla left him 
almost at the head of the aristocratical party, he served them ably 
and faithfully with his sword, while he endeavoured to mitigate 
the evils of their ascendency by restoring to the commons of Rome, 
on the earliest opportunity, the most important of those privileges 
and liberties which they had lost under the tyranny of their late 
master. He received the due reward of his honest patriotism in 
the unusual honours and trusts that were conferred on him ; but his 
greatness could not corrupt his virtue ; and the boundless powers 
with which he was repeatedly invested he wielded with the high- 
est ability and uprightness to the accomplishment of his task, and 
then, without any undue attempts to prolong their duration, he 
honestly resigned them. At a period of general cruelty and ex- 
tortion towards the enemies and subjects of the commonwealth, 
the character of Pompey in his foreign commands was marked 
by its humanity and spotless integrity ; his conquest of the pirates 
was effected with wonderful rapidity, and cemented by a merciful 
policy, which, instead of taking vengeance for the past, accom- 
plished the prevention of evil for the future : his presence in Asia, 
when he conducted the war with Mithridates, was no less a relief 
to the provinces from the tyranny of their governors, than it was 
their protection against the arms of the enemy. It is true that 
wounded vanity led him, after his return from Asia, to unite him- 
self for a time with some unworthy associates ; and this connex- 
ion, as it ultimately led to all the misfortunes, so did it immediately 
tempt him to the worst faults of his political, life, and involved 
him ill a career of difficulty, mortification, and shame. But after 
this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his natural station, and 
was universally regarded as the fit protector of the laws and 
liberties of his country, when they were threatened by Caesar's 

3*6 Cicero, Tiisculan. Disputat. III. 27. 



298 CHARACTER OF POMPEY. 

rebellion. In the conduct of the civil war he showed something 
of weakness and vacillation ; but his abilities, though consider- 
able, were far from equal to those of his adversary : and his in- 
feriority was most seen in that want of steadiness in the pursuit 
of his own plans, which caused him to abandon a system already 
sanctioned by success, and to persuade himself that he might yield 
with propriety to the ill-judged impatience of his followers for bat- 
tle. His death is one of the few tragical events of those times 
which may be regarded with unmixed compassion. It was not 
accompanied, like that of Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and 
despair of suicide ; nor can it be regarded like that of Csesar, as 
the punishment of crimes, unlawfully inflicted indeed, yet suffered 
deservedly. With a character of rare purity and tenderness in 
all his domestic relations, he was slaughtered before the eyes of 
his wife and son ; whilst flying from the ruin of a most just cause, 
he was murdered by those whose kindness he was entitled to 
claim. His virtues have not been transmitted to posterity with 
their deserved fame ; and while the violent republican writers have 
exalted the memory of Cato and Brutus ; while the lovers of litera- 
ture have extolled Cicero ; and the admirers of successful ability 
have lavished their praises on Csesar ; Pompey's many and rare 
merits have been forgotten in the faults of his triumvirate, and in 
the weakness of temper which he displayed in the conduct of his 
last campaign. But he must have been in no ordinary degree 
good and amiable, for whom his countrymen professed their en- 
thusiastic love, unrestrained by servility, and unimpelled by fac- 
tion ; and though the events of his life must now be gathered for 
the most part from unfriendly sources, yet we think that they who 
read them impartially will continually cherish his memory with a 
warmer regard, and will feel that in themselves the prophecy ol 
the poet has been fulfilled. 

" Haec et apud seras gentes, populosque nepotum 
Spesque, metusque simul, perituraque voto movebunt. 
Attonitique omnes, veluti venientia, fata, 
Non transmissa, legent, et adhuc tibi, Magne, favebunt." 

Lucan, Pharsalia, VII. 207. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CAIUS JULIUS C^SAR.— A SKETCH OP THE ROMAN HISTORY FROM 
THE APPOINTMENT OF CESAR TO THE COMMAND IN GAUL TO 
HIS DEATH.— FROM U.C. 695 TO 710, A.C. 59 TO 44. [CONTINUED.] 

C^sAR was fully aware of the importance of pursuing Pompey, 
as he knew that the whole cause of the common- From u. cess to™, 
wealth depended on him alone, and that if he were cs?a/pS?sues pom- 
once removed, his partisans would instantly be p''^- 
divided, and probably only a small portion of them would be in- 
clined to continue the contest. Accordingly, while M. Antonius 
led the greater part of the victorious army back to Brundisium,^ 
Csesar himself crossed by the Hellespont into Asia, and by the 
fame of his arrival dissipated an assemblage of some citizens of 
rank, who had been called together at Ephesus to sanction the 
removal of the treasures of the temple of Diana, for the service of 
Pompey and the commonwealth. After a short stay in the pro- 
vince of Asia, he received information that Pompey had been 
seen at Cyprus ; and thinking it probable that he would seek an 
asylum in Egypt, he resolved to follow him thither. Already 
the news of the battle of Pharsalia, and of the flight of Pompey, 
had induced many of the squadrons which had been sent to 
support the cause of the commonwealth by the states in alliance 
Avith Rome, to return to their own countries. The Eyptian fleet 
had been one of this number ; whilst theRhodians, taking a more 
decisive part, had excluded Pompey, as we have seen, from their 
harbours, and now furnished Cgesar with ten ships of war, to en- 
able him- to follow the man in whose cause they themselves had 
been so lately engaged. These, with a few other vessels procured 
in the ports of the province of Asia, sufficed to transport the two 
incomplete legions, which at this moment were the whole of Cas- 
sar's disposable force, and of which one had followed him imme- 
diately from Pharsalia, and the other had been sent for from the 
south of Greece, where it had been employed on a separate service, 

1 Cicero, Philippic, 11. 24. Caesar, III. 105, 106. 



300 C^SAR ARRIVES IN EGYPT, AND IS INVOLVED IN WAR. 

He arrives in Egypt, ^iid consequeiitly had not been present at the late 
fniwa^'^byhrsTiuei battle. With tliesB two legions be landed at Alex- 
l7p"oiemy'and'cieo' andila, and there was informed of Pompey's mur- 
pa'~- der, and saw his head and his ring presented to him 

as a grateful offering by the murderers. He is said to have shed 
tears at the sight f and those signs of mere physical susceptibiHty 
so little imply any real humanity of character, that they flowed 
very probably from a spontaneous feeling; and Cassar may have 
indulged them with pleasure, flattering himself that they were 
a proof of the tenderness of his nature. At any rate it cost him 
no eflbrt to refuse any expressions of gratitude to the murderers ; 
for he was immediately involved in a quariel with them, because 
he claimed the right, as Roman consul,^ to arbitrate in all disputes 
which related to the execution of the late king's will. Thus the 
very interference, from the fear of which Ptolemy's counsellors 
had resolved to murder Pompey, now threatened them in a much 
more alarming shape, when Csesar announced it as his de- 
cision that Ptolemy and Cleopatra should both dismiss their 
armies, and repair to his quarters at Alexandria, there to state 
their respective pretensions before him. The king's oflicers, indig- 
nant at the aff'ront thus offered to the crown of Egypt, instantly 
brought up their army from the Syrian frontiers, and prepared 
to attack Caesar; but the young king himself, with his tutor 
and minister Pothinus, was already in Alexandria, and in 
Caesar's power ; so that the attempts of his subjects to de- 
liver him were represented by his oppressor as a rebellion against 
his authority. Cleopatra too was in Caesar's quarters ; but she was 
no unwilling prisoner, if the common stories of the time may be 
credited,^ which tell us, that trusting to the influence of her charms, 
she readily obeyed Caesar's summon^, and finding that access 
to him was precluded by the besieging army of her brother, she 
caused herself to be wrapped up in a package of carpeting, and in 
this manner was safely conveyed into Caesar's presence. It is 
added, that she was not disappointed in her expectations ; that 
Caesar's interference in the dispute between her and her brother, 
which had originated in political and ambitious motives, was con- 
tinued after his interview with Cleopatra from feelings of a differ- 
ent nature, and that his passion for her involved him more deeply 
in a contest, in which he had at first found himself engaged un- 
expectedly, and from which, when it became serious, he might 
otherwise have deemed it politic to extricate himself Be this as 
it may, Caesar remained some months at Alexandria, maintaining 
a difficult and sometimes a perilous struggle with the Egyptians. 
Without entering here into the detail of his adventures, we must 

9 Plutarch, in Caesare, 48. Livy, Epit- ^ Plutarch, in Caesare, 49. Dion Cas- 
ome, CXII. sins, XLII. 201 , edit. Leunclav. 

3 Caesar, III. 107. 



PROCEEDINGS OP POMPEY'S PARTISANS. 301 

take a survey of the state of the Roman empire during his absence, 
and describe the effects of his victory at Pharsalia, and of that sub- 
sequent neglect of his affairs which delayed for two years the full 
enjoyment of its advantages. 

If Ponipey ever received intelligence, during his flight, of 
the services performed by his navy in the seas Proceedings of pom- 
westward of Greece, and of the sudden check given the\attk 'oF Phw- 
to this career of success by the fatal issue of the ^^''=^- 
battle of Pharsalia, he must have been most bitterly sensible of 
his error in staking his fortunes on the event of a general action 
by land. At the very moment when he was escaping as a fugi- 
tive from the scene of his defeat in Thessaly, one of his squadrons 
was again blockading the harbour of Brundisium f and another, 
under the command of C. Cassius, was infesting the coasts of 
Sicily, and had lately burnt the entire fleet of the enemy, amount- 
ing to thirty-five ships, in the harbour of Messina. But the news 
of Pompey's defeat at once deterred his lieutenants from pursuing 
their advantages ; their squadrons retreated from the coasts of 
Italy and Sicily, and repaired to Corcyra, at which place the prin- 
cipal surviving leaders of the party of the commonwealth were 
at this time assembled. We have already mentioned that M. Cato 
had. been left with fifteen cohorts to defend Dyrrhachium, when 
Pompey set out in pursuit of Caesar into Thessaly, and that M. 
Cicero, M. Yarro, and some other distinguished individuals, had 
remained from different causes at Dyrrhachium also. In the 
midst of their anxiety for the issuq of the campaign, T. Labienus 
arrived a fugitive from the rout of Pharsalia,^ and the tidings 
which he brought produced at once a general consternation and 
disorder. The magazines of corn were presently sacked by the 
soldiers, who, considering the war as ended, were resolved to pay 
themselves as they best could for their services ; nor could they 
be induced to accompany their officers in their flight, but proceed- 
ed to burn the transports in the harbour, that none of their num- 
ber might be able to separate their fortunes from those of the 
rest. But the ships of war for the most part were still faithful, 
and in these the chiefs of the vanquished party hastened to es- 
cape to Corcyra. When they had reached that island a new 
scene of distraction ensued. The command of the forces was of- 
fered to Cicero, as he was the oldest senator present of consular 
dignity -^ but he being determined to take no further part in the 
contest, declined it ; and being protected, as it is said, by Cato, from 
the violence of Cn. Pompeius, Pompey's eldest son, who wish- 
ed to kill him as a deserter from the cause of the commonwealth, 
he returned to Italy to throw himself on the mercy of the victori- 

s Cffisar, III. 100, 101. t Plutarch, in Cicerone, 39. 

fi Cicero, de Divinatione, I. 31. 



302 CATO WITHDRAWS TO AFRICA. 

ous party. D. Lselius,^ one of the commanders of the Asiatic 
squadron in Pompey's fleet, followed the example of Cicero. 
There were others, and these formed a considerable body, who 
neither chose to continue the war nor to submit to Caesar, but Avho 
resolved for the present to remain in Greece, and there to observe 
cato withdraws to i^ow. a distance the course of events at Rome. 
^'"'^- But Cato,' Cn. Pompeius,'" Labienus, and several 

others, hoping that Pompey would be able to make a stand in 
some of the eastern provinces, determined to carry their fleet 
thither in order to join him ; and accordingly set sail to the south 
without delay. They touched at Petras, on the coast of Pelopon- 
nesus, and there took on board Petreius and Faustus Sylla, after 
which they continued their voyage to the coast of Africa. Here 
they met with Cornelia and her son Sextus Pompeius, who, find- 
ing no secure asylum in the east, were now probably flying to the 
province of Africa, which, since the death of Curio, had remain- 
ed in the peaceable possession of the friends of the commonwealth. 
On receiving the disastrous tidings of Pompey's murder, a fresh 
division took place amongst his partisans. C. Cassius, afterwards 
so distinguished, abandoned his associates, and sailed at once 
with the Syrian squadron, which he commanded, to Syria, intend- 
ing to ofler his submission to Caesar. Cato, and those who with 
him were resolved to persist in their opposition to the prevailing 
party, saw that the province of Africa was now the quarter which 
held out to them the most favourable prospects. The command 
of the forces was by common consent bestowed on Cato ; and he 
resolved to attempt to carry his troops by land across the desert 
from Cyrene to the frontiers of the Roman province ; whether it 
was that the departure of the Syrian squadron had deprived him 
of the means of transporting his whole force by sea ; or whether 
the navigation of the neighbourhood of the great Syrtes was look- 
ed upon as more formidable than the fatigues and privations like- 
ly to attend on the march by land. However, the army arrived 
in the province in safety, and found that Scipio had already es- 
caped thither from Pharsalia, and that Juba, king of Mauritania, 

8 Cicero, ad Alticum, XI. epist. VII. as only leaving Cato on the news of Pom- 
XIV. pey's death ; but it seems probable, from 

9 Dion Cassius, XLII. 190, 191. Plu- one of Cicero's letters, that he sailed di- 
tarch in Catone, 56. rectly from Corcyra to Syria, to offer his 

1" We had originally added here the submission, as soon as he had received the 
name of Afranius, on the authority of Di- news of tJie battle of Pharsalia. Epist. 
on Cassius. But if Afranius had been ad Familiar. XV. epist. XV. Appian con- 
with Cato, the command would naturally founds C. Cassius with his brother Lucius, 
have devolved on him, as being a person and supposes him to have been in the Hel- 
of consular dignity ; exactly on the same lespont with his fleet when Cffisar crossed 
principle that Cato, on his arrival in the over into Asia in pursuit of Pompey. So 
province of Africa, ceded the chief author- difficult is it to ascertain the truth, even in 
ity to Scipio. Again, we have followed such indifferent matters, when good con- 
Dion Cassius in representing C. Cassius temporary testimony fails us. 



DEFEAT AND DEATH OP GABINIUS. 393 

was disposed, as heretofore, to support the cause of Pompey to 
the uttermost. Meantime the tyranny and exac- unpromising state of 
tions of Q,. Cassius'Longinus," whom Csesar had fefentpansTAhe em- 
left with the chief command in what was called Sny of the woqpa 
Further Spain, and who, when tribune of the L?ngfnus.^' 
people, had fled with M. Antonius from Rome to Csesar's quarters 
at the beginning of the contest, had provoked a very serious mu- 
tiny among the legions of his province. The troops, supported 
by the inhabitants of Corduba, transferred their obedience to M. 
Marcellus, his quaestor ; and some of them were inclined to 
espouse the cause of Pompey, had not Marcellus, though not 
without difficulty, prevented them ; being himself, it is said, not 
inclined to take so decisive a step till the state of Pompey's affairs 
in other quarters should appear more promising. At length the 
disturbance was appeased by the arrival of M. Lepidus, procon- 
sul of the province of Hither Spain, who took the command of 
the revolted legions without resistance ; and soon after C. Trebo- 
nius was sent to supersede Cassius Longinus in the command of 
the Further Province ; and the ex-governor, while proceeding to 
Italy by sea with the plunder which he had acquired by his ex- 
actions, was lost in a storm at the mouth of the Ebro. It appears 
that Cassar attached great importance to the service which Le- 
pidus had rendered him on this occasion, insomuch that he after- 
wards rewarded him with the honours of a triumph ;^^ and in- 
deed the mutiny of the legions in Spain produced a strong sen- 
sation in Italy, ^^ coupled as it was with the tidings of the great 
force acquired by Scipio and Cato in Africa, and of some disas- 
ters which had befallen Cassar's arms at the same time in Illyri- 
cura and in Asia Minor, M. Octavius,'* whom we 2. m iiiyrieum. De- 

1 1J1J -i i-^1 feat and death of A. 

have already had occasion to mention as the com- GaWnius. 
mander of one of the squadrons in Pompey's fleet, had lingered 
in the lUyrian seas after Cato's departure from Corcyra ; partly 
relying on the courage and fidelity of some of the native tribes 
of Illyricum, and partly, perhaps, hoping to organize a force out 
of the remains of Pompey's army, which were still numerous, 
although in a state of dispersion and despondency. The absence 
of Caesar favoured his hopes ; many persons of distinction, who 
had remained in Greece rather than follow Cato into Africa, and 
who would have submitted to Caesar at once if he had returned 
directly to Rome, began now to accuse themselves of pusillanimity, 
when they heard of the war which was beginning in Egypt ; and 
some of them began to draw together into Illyricum, and to put 
themselves in a hostile attitude. Upon this A. Gabinius, Cicero's 

" Anctor de Bell. Alexandrine, 48, et i3 Cicero, ad Atticum, XI. epist. X. 

eeq. Dion Cassius, XLII. 192. XVI. 

12 Dion Cassius, XLIII. 214, edit. Le- 1* Auctor de Bell. Alexandrine, 42, et 

unclav. seq. 



304 DEFEAT OF DOMITIUS CALVINUS. 

ancient enemy, who, in his tribuneship, had proposed to invest 
Pompey with the extraordinary command against the pirates, and 
who now, like most other men of equal profligacy, was the par- 
tisan of Ceesar. received orders to cross over from Italy with some 
legions that had been lately raised, and secure lUyricmii and Ma- 
cedonia. But Gabinius found himself unequal to the task imposed 
on him ; the country, which was the seat of war, Avas unable to 
support his army, and the stormy season was by this time arrived, 
which rendered his supplies by sea very precarious. He struggled 
to relieve his wants by taking some of the strongholds occupied 
by the enemy ; and in these attempts, being often repulsed with 
loss, he was at last obliged to retreat to Salona, a town on the 
sea coast, in which he hoped to defend himself during the winter. 
But the Illyrians attacked him on his march, and defeated him 
with considerable loss, so that he reached Salona in a very mis- 
erable condition ; and being blockaded by the victorious enemy, 
and reduced to great extremities, he was taken ill in the course 
of a few months, and died. His disasters were afterwards re- 
trieved by P. Yatinius, a man of equally profligate character, 
who, in his tribuneship, had rendered himself the tool of Caesar, 
and on whose motion Caesar had been originally appointed to his 
fatal command in Gaul. Vatinius obliged Octavius to resign the 
contest and escape to Africa ; and in a short time from his first 
arrival in Illyricum, he reduced the whole province to a state of 
obedience. But before this change took place, and while Gabinius 
was shut up in Salona, the aspect of Caesar's affairs was very un- 
3. In Asia, Defeat of pi'oiT^ising ; and it was at the same time that 
nu3 b?°Pharnace*^rson auother of hls Ueutenauts, Cn. Domitius Calvinus, 
ofMithridates. sustalucd a sevcro defeat in Asia from Pharnaces, 

the son of the famous Mithridates. This prince having received 
from the Romans the kingdom of the Bosphorus,'^ or what is 
now the Crimea, as the reward of his treason against his father, 
now, it seems, wished to avail himself of the distracted state of 
the Roman empire to recover some other parts of his hereditary 
dominions, and began to invade Cappadocia and the lesser Arme- 
nia, which were possessed by two petty princes under the protec- 
tion of Rome. Application was presently made by one of them to 
Cn. Domitius Calvinus for aid, as Caesar had intrusted that officer 
with the chief command in the different provinces of Asia Minor ; 
and after some fruitless attempts at negotiation, Domitius advanced 
with an army into the Lesser Armenia ; and there coming to an 
engagement with Pharnaces, he was defeated, and obliged to fall 
back as far as the province of Asia. Pharnaces, meanwhile, 
overran the whole of Pontus, which had been the chief seat of 
his father's government, and congratulated himself on having so 

'5 Appian, de Bell. Mithridat. 113. Auctor de Bell. Alexand. 34, et seq. 



STATE OP ROME AND OP ITALY. 395 

soon recovered so large a portion of that which Mithridates had 
lost. During all this time Caesar was still in Egypt ; and the va- 
rious reports which arrived from that country, together with the 
certain ill success of his affairs in other quarters, produced a con- 
stant accession of strength to the party of the commonwealth in 
Africa. 

From this sketch of the condition of some of the provinces, we 
turn back, with an eager curiosity, to inquire Avhat state of Rome and of 
was the state of Rome itself, and with what tem- "'^^y- 
per the bodies which still retained the names of the senate and 
people, were disposed to receive their new master. After Cicero 
had crossed over into Greece, about the middle of the year 704, 
to join the army of the commonwealth, none, it is probable, re- 
mained in Italy, but such as were the active partisans, or the 
unresisting slaves of Cassar, Among the latter was T. Pompo- 
nius Atticus, who, according to the tenets of the Epicureans, con- 
sidered it an unwise disturbance of his enjoyments to take any 
part in political contests, calculating that, whatever became of the 
liberties of his country, he. should still retain his own villas and 
gardens through the influence of his friends on one side or on the 
other. Men of this stamp were a clay that might be moulded to 
any shape at the pleasure of the conqueror ; and the daily growth 
of this selfish spirit, under pretence of an aversion to the hor- 
rors of a civil war, will easily account for the introduction of that 
mere despotism which was established as soon as the contest in 
Africa was decided. Out of the capital it seemed vain to look 
for any remains of public feeling : some of the boldest and hardi- 
est of the Italian tribes had been nearly extirpated by Sylla's vic- 
tories and massacres ; the general admission of the Italians to the 
privileges of Roman citizens would naturally attract the most en- 
terprising and active part of the population to Rome ; and their 
places would be ill supplied by that multitude of disbanded sol- 
diers whom Sylla had converted into landed proprietors, by set- 
tling them in the districts which he had desolated. It is probable, 
that many of these soldiers would soon, moreover, be glad to part 
with their land, either to cover their losses in farming, or to sup- 
ply their extravagances. As early as the period of Catiline's con- 
spiracy, we find many of them ready to promote a new scramble 
for plunder ; and in the fourteen years which had since elapsed, 
we may suspect that a very large proportion of the estates, grant- 
ed by Sylla to his veterans, had passed into the hands of the 
great nobility, by whom the soil of Italy was so generally monop- 
olized. Wherever land was held by a proprietor of this descrip- 
tion, the free population quickly withered away, and slaves were 
the only cultivators, and the only inhabitants. The towns were 
overwhelmed by the disproportionate greatness of the capital, and 
were each of too little importance to form a rallying point in op- 



306 STATE OP ROME AND OP ITALY. 

position to Rome; whilst the local distinctions and prejudices 
which divided the Tuscan from the Campanian, or the Apulian 
from the inhabitant of Picenum, were still too strong to admit of 
much habitual sympathy of feeUng or concert in action between 
the people of different parts of the peninsula. Besides, they had 
no longer that peculiar and direct interest in the civil wars of 
Rome which they had felt in the times of Marius and Sylla. 
Then every town of Italy was conscious that its enjoyment of the 
envied privileges of Roman citizens, the elevation of its people 
from the rank of subjects to sovereigns, would be secured by the 
victory of Cinna and Carbo, and would be at least endangered by 
the triumph of the aristocracy. But now, whatever was the 
issue of the war, Nola and Volaterras, Asculum and Corfinium, 
would only share the fate of Rome ; and what the capital could 
submit to endure, the provincial towns could scarcely presume to 
consider as an evil. It was this want of confidence in themselves, 
this political helplessness, leading the rest of Italy to follow tame- 
ly in the steps of Rome, and disposing the people of Rome itself 
to rely for every thing upon their government, and to be incapable 
of any organized exertions among themselves, which, above all 
other causes, tended to lower the character of the times, and 
marked each successive generation, during a course of many cen- 
turies, with a deeper stain of timidity and weakness.'^ 

Whatever, therefore, might have been their secret wishes, the 
people of Rome and of Italy had remained tranquil during the 
campaign in Greece, had given no support to the attempts of Cae- 
lius and Milo, and were now ready to receive the destruction of 
their liberties as the natural consequence of the battle of Pharsalia. 
After that battle, M. Antonius, as we have seen, returned with the 
greater part of the victorious legions to Italy. It was soon shown 
that the power of the sword was henceforth to be paramount ; the 
troops were quartered on the inhabitants of the different towns, 
and indulged themselves in the full license of unrestrained sol- 
diers ;i^ the general, after exhibiting a second time a scene of 
scandalous debauchery in his progress through the country, arrived 
at Rome, and there commenced the work of confiscation and pil- 
lage. We hear nothing further of P. Servilius, who was the nom- 

•6 It implies a much higher national peuple Franqais tenaitplus a I'egalite qu'a 
character to be anxious for the general la liberie." (Mc^moires, I. 145.) The rev- 
liberty, good government, and positive olution succeeded completely in destroy- 
amelioration of the state of the whole ing the offensive privileges possessed by 
people, than to make a desperate struggle the aristocracy ; but it may be doubted 
for the removal of invidious distinctions whether, even at this day, the French en- 
between one class of the community and tertain a just value for the general freedom 
another. The Romans and the Italians had and political welfare of the whole state ; 
vigour enough to do the latter, but they and it is certain that they did not do so 
wanted the much higher qualities requisite twenty years ago. 
to insure the former. In like manner, Na- it Cicero, Philippic. II. 25. 
poleon Buonaparte has observed, " Quele 



DISTURBANCES CAUSED BY DOLABELLA. 397 

inal consul of the republic ; the government of Italy seems to have 
been vested solely in Antonius, although he possessed no other 
title than that of Caesar's lieutenant. But it was soon proposed 
that the office of dictator should be again conferred on Caesar,, 
although he was then far from Italy ; and when this power was 
bestowed on him, by a vote of the people, for the term of a year, 
M. Antonius was, at the same time, named his master of the horse, 
and thus appeared to be in some sort invested with a legal authori- 
tv. It is said bv Dion Cassius,'^ that a vote of the caesar appointed dic- 

•' 1 1 /-~i i-ixT-JU i tator, M. Antonius 

people empowered Caesar to punish the adherents master of the horse. 
of Pompey as he thought proper, and gave him besides the power 
of consul for five years, and that of tribune of the people for life. 
There was no reasonable ground for bestowing these unusual hon- 
ours ; for the original pretext of Caesar's rebellion was merely to 
place himself on a level with Pompey in retaining or resigning his 
province, and to obtain the right of becoming a candidate for the 
consulship. He was now at this time consul, and Pompey's 
death had left him not only without a superior in dignity, but 
without an equal. He had already gained, therefore, all that he 
pretended to fight for ; and a general amnesty might now have been 
passed, which, while it saved him from the punishment due to his 
treason, would have left him in undisputed possession of the first 
place in the commonwealth. Nor had he, like Sylla, any pub- 
lic evils to remedy ; no undue preponderance of the aristocratical 
or of the popular party required the aid of a legislator with abso- 
lute powers to restore the constitution to a healthier condition. 
There were no wrongs to be, redressed, but those which he had 
himself caused ; nor was there any voice which called for a re- 
form of the constitution, except that of his own ambition. 

It is probable that Caesar's protracted absence, and the want 
of all ordinary magistrates at Rome, impelled individuals of the 
victorious party to aspire to greatness independently Disturbances ca„sed 
of the patronage of their chief. P. Dolabella, ^^ Cice- ?r^b^n?°hip?"^^ *"' 
ro's son-in-law, procured his election, as one of the ^- ^- ™- 
tribunes of the people, for the year 706 ; and when he had entered 
on his office, he began to revive the laws lately proposed by M. 
Caelius, for exempting tenants from all demands for the rent of 
their houses during one year, and for a general abolition of debts. 
The master of the horse was likely, he thought, to support him, 
both from personal friendship, and from his general inclination to 
uphold the cause of the needy and the profligate, and if his coun- 
tenance could be procured, there was no effectual opposition to be 
dreaded. L. Trebellius, indeed, one of Dolabella's colleagues,^'' 
attempted to defend the interests of landlords and creditors, and 

18 XLII. 194. 20 Cicero, Philippic. VI. 4. 

19 Dion Cassius, XLII. 198. Cicero ad 
Atticum, XI. epist. XXIII. 



308 CJESAR LEAVES EGYPT. 

scenes of great disorder were frequently exhibited in the streets of 
Rome in consequence of these disputes, in the course of which 
many lives were lost on both sides ; but as long as M. Antonius 
allowed Dolabella to go on Avith impunity, his party was likely 
to prevail in the contest. But the senate called upon the master 
of the horse to exert his power for the preservation of the public 
peace ; and it was rumoured that he was made acquainted at this 
time with a criminal intercourse subsisting between Dolabella 
and some female friend or relation of his own.^^ This private 
injury made him more willing to listen to the senate's call ; he 
brought troops into the city, and when the populace broke out into 
a riot in support of Dolabella's laws, he chastised them with 
great severity, and is said to have put no fewer than 800 of the 
rioters to the sword.^^ The present masters of the common- 
wealth, although at the beginning of their career they professed 
to espouse the popular party, had now obtained a power which 
enabled them to cast off their old connexions ; and declared, b}'" 
their conduct, that it was to the swords of a disciplined army, and 
not to the uncertain favour of a tumultuous populace, that they 
were resolved to owe their ascendency. 

Yet at this very time the obedience of the army itself was be- 
Discontent. in Caesar's gliding to wavcr. Antoulus, whllc indulging in 
army m Italy. evcry oxcoss hlmsclf, couuived, it is probable, at 

many irregularities in the conduct of the soldiers ; and the other 
officers,'^^ from a wish to gain popularhy, or from the natural re- 
laxation consequent upon victory, permitted the discipline of the 
troops to be seriously impaired. It was known that Caesar in- 
tended to transport his veteran legions into Africa, as soon as the 
affairs of the East should leave him at liberty ; and the soldiers 
were highly dissatisfied at finding that they were to be exposed 
to another campaign, '^^ while no mention was heard of fulfilling the 
promises which had been made to them on former occasions. 
They confirmed one another in their resolutions not to leave Italy 
till their previous claims were satisfied ; and Avhen P. Sylla, an 
oflicer of high rank,^'^ who had commanded the right wing of 
Caesar's army at Pharsalia, endeavoured to pacify them, the sol- 
diers of the twelfth legion assailed him with stones, so that he nar- 
rowly escaped with his life. Several other persons experienced 
the same treatment, and some individuals of praetorian dignity 
are said to have been actually murdered by the mutineers.'^^ In- 
jjBsar leaves Egjpt. tcUigence of thcsc disordcrs quickened Caesar's wish 
to return to Italy. He had at last, about the middle of the year 706, 

a> Plutarch, in Antonio, 9. 25 Cicero, ad Atticum, XI. epist. XXI. 

22 Livy, Epitome, CXIII. XXII. 

23 Auctor de Bell. Alexand. G.'i. 26 Plutarch, in Caesare, 51. Dion Cae- 

24 Cicero, ad Atticum, XI. epist. XX. sius, XLIl. 209. 
XXII. 



CiESAR RETURNS TO ROME. 3Q9 

brought the war in Egypt to a conckision, by placing Cleopatra 
and her younger brother on the throne,^'' as the elder Ptolemy 
had perished in the course of the contest ; and from Egypt he had 
marched into Syria, and thence to Cilicia and Cap- ^g passes through 
padocia ; arranging on his way the affairs of those syrm and ciiida. 
several provinces, receiving the submissions of all the petty prin- 
ces or chiefs dependent on the Roman empire, and continuing 
them in their respective governments on such conditions as he 
judged proper. These matters were easily and quickly settled ; 
but Pharnaces, king of the Bosphorus, was hkely to occasion a 
longer yet an unavoidable delay. It was the boast of the Romans 
never to allow a foreign power to take advantage of their domestic 
quarrels ; and it would have reflected disgrace on Caesar had he 
suffered Pharnaces to enjoy his late conquest without molestation, 
from his eagerness to prosecute his own private contest with his 
countrymen. Accordingly he called upon Pharnaces to evacuate 
Pontus without delay ; and finding, according to the statement of 
his anonymous partisan, ^^ that his demands were evaded, because 
it was well known how anxious he was to return to Italy, he 
marched instantly in quest of the enemy. Pharnaces Avas at this 
time encamped near Zela,*^^ a town of Pontus, on the spot on 
which his father had gained one of his most famous victories over 
the Romans ; and when Caesar arrived and encamped at no great 
distance from him, his confidence in the fortune of the place, and 
in his own recent successes, induced him to attack the Roman 
army in the strong position which it had occupied. He defeats phamaces 
His rashness was quickly punished by a total de- luKeoil^ont^^ ^'^°' 
feat ; he himself fled from the field of battle with only a few 
horsemen ; and the whole of Pontus was lost by this single blow. 
Caesar, unusually delighted at this rapid and most seasonable 
conquest, left two legions to secure Pontus, and himself hastened 
on his way towards Italy ; still however, as before, employing the 
time on his journey in settling the affairs of the provinces, and ac- 
customing the petty Asiatic princes to look upon the government 
of Rome as already become monarchical. It was late in the 
year,^° according to the corrupt calendar of the period, when he 
arrived in the capital, and there proceeded to exercise tbat sove- 
reign authority with which his office of dictator, and still more 
the swords of his soldiers, had invested him. 

M. Antonius, on his return to Italy, after the bat- 
tle of Pharsaha,^' had published an edict by Cge- ^e returns to Rome, 
sar's express orders, forbidding all the fugitives of the vanquished 
party to set foot in Italy without having received their pardon 

2T Auctor de Bell. Alexand. 33 — 65, et 29 Auctor de Bell. Alexand. 72, et seq. 
seq. ^'' Plutarch, in Csesare, 51. 

28 Auctor de Bell. Alexand. 71. 3i Cicero, ad Atticum, XI. epist. VII. 



310 CESAR'S ACTS OF SPOLIATION. 

His acts of spoliation from Coesar himself. In this manner a multitude 
and^wanton display of ^^ distinguished citlzens were condemned to live 

in banishment ; but their property was not in every instance con- 
fiscated, and some were afterwards allowed, as we shall see here- 
after, to return to their country. The rapacity of the conqueror, 
however, had been abundantly gratified in the eastern provinces ; 
where he had amassed immense sums,^- partly by imposing fines 
on those princes or states who had supported the cause of the 
commonwealth, partly by the direct plunder of their wealthiest 
temples, and partly by receiving a price for the grants or titles 
which he gave or confirmed to any city or individual. But the 
demands of the approaching campaign in Africa could not be an- 
swered without further exactions ; and although he had a very 
considerable fund in the numerous golden crowns, figures, and 
other articles, which were presented to him from every quarter 
through fear or flattery, he deemed it expedient, on his arrival in 
Italy, to raise money to a large amount by compulsory loans from 
different cities as well as from private individuals ; and at the 
same time he proceeded to confiscate and expose to public sale 
the property of some of his most distinguished opponents,^^ which 
Antonius had not ventured to touch by his own authority. It 
was on this occasion that the house and furniture of Pompey the 
Great were set up to auction by the command of his father-in- 
law ; and that Antonius, amidst the general grief and indignation 
of the Roman people, became their purchaser. At this time, also, 
if we may believe Dion Cassius,^^ Caesar made some additional 
regulations in favour of insolvent debtors, and actually enforced 
the proposed law of Dolabella, for relieving tenants from rent for 
one year, in all cases where the rent amounted to five hundred 
denarii, or about 151. 12s. 6d. His chief partisans were rewarded 
by being appointed to various public offices, of which he assumed 
the complete disposal ; and as a cheap method of gratifying the 
vanity of some of his associates, he conferred the empty title of 
consuls, for the short remainder of the year, on Q. Fufius 
Calenus, his late lieutenant in Achaia, and on P. Vatinius, who 
had rendered him most important services in Illyricum. The 
prostitution of a dignity so respected, excited a general dis- 
gust ; and in this open assumption of absolute power he already 
betrayed the same contempt for the feelings of his countrymen 
which afterwards, when exhibited with still greater aggravation, 
contributed principally to the fatal conspiracy of the ides of 
March. But amongst all this distribution of honours and benefits, 
the veteran legions found that they were still to trust only to 
promises ; and that the period when they should obtain their 

32 Dion Cassius, XLII. 208. Suetonius, ^3 Cicero, Philippic. II. 26, et seq. 
in Ceesare, 54. ^ XLII. 209. 



CAMPAIGN IN AFRICA. 



3U 



discharge, and be rewarded with settlements of lands, was still 
far distant. Aware of their own importance on 
the eve of another campaign, but not sufficiently ^"'"""'f*'"'*™'- 
appreciating the able and resolute character of their commander, 
they broke up from their quarters in Campania,'' and advanced 
to Rome, committing various excesses on their march, and filling 
the country and the capital with terror. When they arrived be- 
fore the city, Caesar allowed them to enter the walls, retaining 
only their swords, and instantly presented himself before them in 
the Campus Martins, and demanded why they had left their quar- 
ters, and what they wanted at Rome, They replied that they 
were come to claim their release from any further service ; upon 
which Caesar answered, without any apparent reluctance, that 
their claim was reasonable, and that he would discharge them 
instantly ; assuring them at the same time that all their comrades 
who had served their full term of years should be discharged in 
the same manner, and promising still to give them the settlements 
in lands which he had before allowed them to look for. The 
soldiers were not prepared for this treatment, and in proportion to 
his seeming readiness to part from them, their wish to continue 
in his service revived. Caesar perceived his ad- Hequeiisitbyhi* 
vantage, and persisted in giving them their dis- dJSS.^^" *"'' "^' 
charge, expressing particularly his surprise and sorrow to find 
the soldiers of his favourite tenth legion implicated in this meet- 
ing. At last, on their repeated entreaties to be forgiven, he said 
that he would retain them alt except the tenth legion ; nor could 
he be prevailed on to receive that legion into his favour, '« so that 
it followed him to Africa without his orders, from the mere zeal 
of the soldiers to do something that might entitle them to pardon. 
After all, he punished those who had been most active in the 
mutiny, by depiivina^ them of a third part of their share of the 
plunder gained in Africa, and of the lands which he afterwards 
bestowed on his army ; some also ha actually discharged at once, 
and settled them in different parts of Italy ; and others, it is said, 
he found means to em'ploy in the most dangerous services in the 
ensuing campaign," and thus freed himself from their turbulence, 
while he made their deaths useful by occasioning a loss to his 
enemies. 

Having thus re-established his authority over his legions, he 
proceeded witli his usual activity to carry the war 
into Africa. He arrived at Lilybceum, in Sicily,^^ campaign m Africa. 
on the seventeenth of December, and having waited there till he 
had assembled a force of six legions, and about two thousand 
cavalry, he embarked from Sicily on the twenty-seventh, and 

35 Dion Cassias, XLII. 209, 210. Ap- ^^ Dion Cassius, XLII. 211. 
plan, de Bello Civili, 11. 92, et seq. ^3 Auctor de Bello Africano, 1, et seq, 

•6 Suetonius, in Caesare, 70. 

21 



312 FORCES OF SCIPIO AND CATO, 

reached the coast of Africa on the thirtieth. He landed near 
Adriimetum with no more than three thousand men, the rest ol 
his forces having been dispersed in different directions on their 
passage ; and as he knew not what points of the coast might be 
least occupied by the enemy, he had been unable before his de- 
parture from Sicily to appoint any particular spot as the place of 
destination for the whole armament. Finding Adrumetum too 
strongly garrisoned to be attacked with any hope of success, he 
put his troops in motion again on the first of January, and on the 
evening of that day halted at Ruspina, from whence he again set out 
On the following morning, and approached Leptis. The inhabit- 
ants of that town sent to offer their submission to him, and he 
accordingly occupied the gates with a guard, and having given 
strict orders that no other soldiers should be allowed to enter the 
walls, he encamped for the night in the neighbourhood of Leptis, 
and was joined on that very evening by a part of his army from 
Sicily, which had put in by a fortunate accident at this very point 
of the coast. On the third of January he returned to Ruspina, 
and there remained for some time, having collected considerable 
supplies of provisions from the adjacent country, and having re- 
ceived a large accession of strength by the arrival of another di- 
vision of the troops from Lilybaeum. But his numbers were as yet 
very inferior to those of the enemy, and he could not depend for 
the permanent subsistence of his army on the resources of a coun- 
try which was almost entirely possessed by his opponents. He 
waited therefore anxiously for the arrival of additional reinforce- 
ments, as well as of supplies of provisions from Sicily, Sardinia, 
and other parts of the empire;^* whilst he secured himself for 
the present by bestowing extraordinary care on the fortifications 
of his camp, and by carrying lines from this and from the 
town of Ruspina down to the sea-shore, in order that ships might 
approach the land with safety, and that the succours of whatever 
kind, which might be contained in them, might reach his camp 
without molestation. 

It appears that the supporters of the commonwealth had by 
^•orcesofscipio this time organized a very large army in Africa; 
and cato. ^j^j th^j; their navy, although not possessing the 

command of the sea so exclusively as during the campaign in 
Greece, was yet strong enough to cause great annoyance to the 
enemy, and during Caesar's absence in Egypt had made descents 
on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia,^" and had carried off from 
them several vessels, and a considerable quantity of arms. While 
Italy was suffering under the misrule of Antonius, and Rome 
itself was distracted by the turbulent tribuneship of Dolabella, it 
was expected that Scipio and Cato would transport their forces 

« Auctor de Bello AfricaDO, 20. «" Dion Caasius, XLII. 211. 



DIVERSION OF SITtUS IN FAVOUR OF CiESAR. 313 

from Africa, and avail themselves of so fair an opportunity for 
regaining possession of the seat of government.* ' But we must 
suppose that they had not yet collected an army sufficient to en- 
counter Caesar's veteran legions j and perhaps the want of arms 
for their regular infantry was a principal obstacle to such an at- 
tempt. With cavalry and light troops they were abundantly pro- 
vided ; for the Numidians of the Roman province were admii ably 
calculated for those services, and to them was added the whole 
force of the kingdom of Mauritania, which .Tuba furnished to the 
cause of the' commonwealth. Utica, the most considerable city 
in Africa, was held by M. Cato,*^ and he had made it a great 
magazine of arms and provisions, as well as a depot for the new 
levies which he was constantly forming to reinforce the main 
army in the field. That army was commanded by Scipio, with 
the title of proconsul; and although the military talents of the 
general-in-chief were not very highly distinguished, yet Labienus 
and Petreius, his principal lieutenants, were officers of great ex- 
perience and ability. 

In landing on the coast of Africa with a force very inferior to 
that of his opponents, Caesar may be supposed to Difficulties of cssar 
have had two objects in view ; first, to prevent the campaifn."'"^"^''"' 
eneriny from carrying the war into Italy, and to preserve his usual 
character of being always the assailant ; and, secondly, to deprive 
them by his presence of some part of the resources of the pro- 
vince, of which otherwise they would have had the complete dis- 
posal. His great renown as a general, his success in other parts 
of the empire, and that character of the lawful representative of 
the Roman people, which he derived from the possession of the 
capital, gained him immediately some partisans among the cities 
and tribes of Africa,^^ and thus produced at onee a diversion in 
his favour. Yet soon after his first landing he was severely ha- 
rassed by the attacks of the enemy's cavalry under Labienus and 
Petreius ; and had Juba united his forces to those of Scipio, their 
<;ombined efforts might have been too overwhelming for Caesar 
to resist. He was saved from this danger by an unexpected in- 
terference. P. Sitius, of Nuceria, had been in his Diversion made by p. 
early life engaged in money transactions, on a very Adventures of sit "u"' 
extensive scale,** not only with many persons in different parts of 
the empire, but also with some foreign princes, and amongst the 
rest with the king of Mauritania, the father of Juba. The sums 
embarked in these various speculations were not always easily to 
be recovered : Sitius had incurred heavy debts at Rome, which 
brought him into the society of dissolute and desperate men, and 
had made him acquainted with L. Catiline and his associates at 

*i Cicero, ad Atticum, XI. epist. XV. « Auctor de Bello Africano, 7. 32, 33 

*« Auctor de Bello Airicano, 22. -36. " Cicfcio, pro P. Syll4, 20. 
Plutarch, in Catone, 58. 



314 ADVENTURES OF SITIUS. 

the eve of their memorable conspiracy. Whether he himself en- 
tered into their schemes is uncertain. It appears that he went 
about that period to Africa, professedly to settle some business 
with the king of Mauritania, but, as many asserted,^^ to employ 
his influence with that prince in levying an armed force against 
the commonwealth. However, his innocence or his good for- 
tune saved him from the fate of the other conspirators, and Cicero 
himself, while defending P. Sylla from the same charge of having 
been Catiline's accomplice, took occasion equally to deny the ac- 
cusation against Sitius. But he was a man of ruined fortunes, 
and it seems that he was afterwards brought before the tribunals 
for some private oflence,^^ and was obliged to go into exile. He 
repaired again to Africa, with an armed force which he had raised 
in Italy and Spain, and which it seems could easily be collected 
by any adventurer of notoriety, while every part of the empire 
was full of slaves and other needy and desperate persons, to whom 
all change was gain. Thus accompanied, Sitius appeared in 
Africa, like one of the chiefs of the free companies in Italy during 
the fourteenth century ; and sold his services to the highest bid- 
der in the constant petty wars which the wild tribes and barba- 
rian sovereigns of that country were carrying on against one 
another. His fame soon became great, for the party which he 
espoused was always victorious ; and if the king of Mauritania 
was slow in paying his debt to him, we may the less wonder that 
he readily associated himself with those inferior chiefs who were 
constantly engaged in predatory warfare with that more powerful 
sovereign. In this way lie was closely united with a prince of 
the name of Bogud, according to Roman orthography, at the time 
that Caesar landed in Africa. By attacking Juba now, Sitius 
might hope to gain far more than plunder, or the pay of a poor 
barbarian chief; he might obtain the repeal of his banishment, 
and expect besides a splendid reward from the sovereign of the 
Roman empire for a service so seasonably rendered to him. Bo- 
gud himself had before shown himself friendly to Cassar,*' proba- 
bly because Juba supported the party of Pompey ; and now when 
Juba was on his march to join Scipio with a considerable army, 
Bogud and P. Sitius attacked his kingdom,^^ took Cirta, one of 
his principal cities, and committed such ravages in his country, 
that he was obliged to return with his whole force to oppose them, 
and even to recall the troops which he had before sent to serve 
under the Roman general, his ally. Meanwhile Cfrsar was rein- 
forced by the arrival of two veteran legions from Sicily ;** and 
when at length Juba yielded to Scipio's pressing applications, and 

«5 Sallust, de Bello Catilinar. 21. Cice- " Auctor de Bello Alexandrino, 59. 

ro, pro Sylla, ubi supra. <8 Aucior de Bello Africano, 25. 

<6 Appian.de Bello Civili, IV. 54. Dion ♦* Auctor de Bello Africano, 34. 
Cassius, XLllI. 214. 



BATTLE OP THAPSUS. 3 15 

came to join him, leaving one of his generals to contend with Bo- 
gud and Sitius,®" the decisive moment was already passed, and 
Caesar's army, was now too formidable to be seriously injured by 
any force which Juba could bring against it. 

From this time the event of the campaign might be looked for 
with little hesitation. Caesar was soon after reinforced by two more 
of his veteran legions, the ninth and tenth ; and he was anxious, 
as before in Greece, to bring the enemy to a general action as soon 
as possible. But his situation now was very different from what 
it had been in his campaign against Pompey. Then he was op- 
posed to a general of talents far less disproportioned to his own, 
and of reputation equal or even superior ; the fleets of his adver- 
saries commanded every sea and cut off all hope of supplies and 
reinforcements ; and the army of the commonwealth was as yet 
unvanquished ; and under the command of its great leader was 
daily gaining fresh strength and confidence. At present, he was 
contiimally receiving deserters from the enemy's army,^' and offers 
of submission and assistance from the towns of the province and 
of Mauritania ; the regular infantry of his opponents was utterly 
unable to resist his veteran legions; and the only annoyance 
which he experienced was from their superior cavalry and light 
troops, whose attacks became daily less alarming as his soldiers 
grew more familiar with them, and better understood how to 
oppose them most effectually. Scipio, indeed, carefully avoided a 
battle ; but the rapidity of Caesar's movements, and the extraor- 
dinary celerity with which his troops were accustomed to construct 
works of every description, at last obliged him to depart from his 
system of caution. On the fourth of April, Caesar gained a march 
upon his antagonists by night,** and appeared on the following 
morning before the town of Thapsus, a place which 
had shown peculiar attachment to Scipio's cause, ^"^° Thapsus- 
and which was at this time defended by a strong garrison. With- 
out loss of time, Caesar began to form lines of circumvallation, and 
to occupy every important post in the neighbourhood so effectually, 
that when Scipio arrived to protect the town, he found his com- 
munications with it already cut off. Under these circumstances, 
Scipio, unwilling to abandon so important a place to its fate, pre- 
pared to form his camp on a spot upon the sea-shore, from wliich 
he hoped to obstruct the operations of the enemy ; and whilst he 
was employed in the construction of the rampart and ditch, he 
.drew out his army in order of battle to cover the parties engaged 
in the work. In this situation he was attacked by Caesar and 
completely defeated. His troops first fled to the camp, which was 
as yet unfinished, and this being forced, they hastened to the camp 

5° Auctor de Bello Africano, 48. 62 Aactor de Bello Africano, 79, et seq, 

c^ Auctor de Bello Africano, 52. 56. 



316 DEATH OP SCIPIO. 

they had left the day before, in the hope of being enabled there to 
make a stand. But finding no officer to rally them, if we may 
believe the statement of Caesar's partisan, they fled, as a last re- 
source, towards the camp of Juba, which was at some distance 
from that of Scipio ; but which they now found equally in posses- 
sion of the victorious enemy. Despairing of any further resistance, 
the fugitives halted on a neighbouring hill, laid down their arms, 
ahd implored quarter. But Csesar's soldiers, with the ferocity natu- 
ral to men who respected no law, and who felt that their swords 
were disposing of the empire of the world, not only massacred the 
whole of this defenceless multitude, but wounded and murdered" 
several persons of distinction who were present in their own army, 
against whom they had some supposed grounds of offence. Caesar 
himself was an eye-witness of this butchery, which, according to 
his partisan's narrative, he in vain endeavoured to prevent. Such a 
scene might have taught him to what a brutal and unmanageable 
power he had subjected his country ; but the crimes of his soldiers 
were forgotten in the splendour of their victory, by which the 
campaign was irrevocably decided. The news of the battle spread 
rapidly in every direction, with an effect as powerful as the tidings 
of the rout of Pharsalia two years before. Scipio, with three or 
four other superior officers, escaped by sea from the scene of their 
Deaths of Scipio, defeat, iu the hope of finding an asylum in Spain."® 

Juba, Afranius, and rnu j • i. ^7 • j • ^ ^i 

petreius. They were driven by contrary winds into the port 

of Hippo, where they were surrounded by a superior naval force, 
employed, as we are told, in the service of the fugitive, P. Sitius. 
Scipio's ship was instantly boarded, and he killed himself to avoid 
falling into the hands of the enemy ; the officers who were with 
him, amongst whom we find the noble name of L. Manlius Tor- 
quatus, either followed his example or were put to death. Of the 
other generals of the vanquished party, Labienus effected his es- 
cape into Spain with Atius Varus and Cn. Pompeius, who, during 
the late campaign, had both held commands by sea. Juba, ac- 
companied by Petreius, fled to his own dominions f* but finding 
that the forces which he had left to protect them had been totally 
defeated by Bogud and P. Sitius, and being shut out of Zama, his 
capital, by his own subjects, who wished to make their peace with 
the conqueror, he continued his flight to one of his country houses, 
and there Petreius and he resolved to die by each others hands. 
But Juba having easily killed Petreius, and having attempted with- 
out eflect to stab himself, persuaded one of his own slaves to become 
his executioner. The fate of Petreius was soon shared by L. 
Afranius, his former colleague in the command of Pompey's army 
in Spain. Afranius, with Faustus Sylla," while attempting to 

53 Auctor de Bello Africano, 9G. Livy, ss Auctor de Bello Africano, 95. Flo- 
Epitome, CXIV. ru3, IV. 2. Dion Cassius, XLIII. 219. 
5< Auctor de Bello Africano, 91. 94. 



CATO KILLS HIMSELF, 3£'7 

reach Spain along the northern coast of Africa, fell, together with 
the wife and children of the latter, into the hands of P. Sitius. 
They were soon after killed, according to Suetonius and Dion 
Cassius, by Caesar's orders ; but the statement of Csesar s partisan 
attributes their death to a disturbance in the army and the vio- 
lence of the soldiers. The wife of Faustus, who was a daughter 
of Pompey, was spared, together with her children, and the en- 
joyment of all her property was granted to her. 

Intelligence of the battle of Thapsus was brought to Utica by 
a party of Scipio's cavalry, who were flying from cato attempts m ram 
the action under the command of Afranius.^^ to defend utica. 
With the usual temper of a defeated and desperate army, these 
fugitives began to revenge themselves for their defeat by plunder- 
ing and murdering many of the citizens of Utica, who were sup- 
posed to be attached to the cause of Csesar. M. Cato alone, with 
a spirit unbroken amidst the disasters of his party, in vain endea- 
voured to give their feelings a better direction, by persuading them 
to defend the town against the enemy ; and when he saw that 
they could not be induced to do their duty, he distributed a sum 
of money to every soldier amongst them, to prevail on them to de- 
part without committing any farther excesses. They thus pur- 
sued their retreat along the coast on their way to Spain, as we 
have alr^dy mentioned ; and in the mean time numerous parties 
of the vanquished army arrived in Utica, with all of whom Cato 
was earnest in his etforts to induce them to continue the contest, 
and to maintain the place. But when he found that their minds 
were possessed by an overwhelming panic, he furnished them 
with all the ships in the harbour to convey them wherever they 
wished to go ; and recommended his son and his other friends to 
the intercession of L. Caesar, his quaestor, who, as being related 
to the conqueror^ might be supposed to possess some influence 
with him. His anxiety, however, for the safety of those about 
him appears less amiable when we find him too proud to accept 
for himself that mercy which he wished to procure for them, and 
resisting with passionate violence the solicitations of his son, that 
he would consent to live for his sake. When the evening came 
he retired to his own apartment,^^ and employed himself for some 
time in reading one of Plato's " Dialogues," endeavouring, it is 
said, to lull the suspicions of his friends by seeming to take a 
lively interest in the fate of those who were escaping by sea from 
Utica, and by sending several times to the sea-side to learn 
the state of the wind and of the weather. But towards 
morning, when all was quiet, he stabbed himself. He mis himself. 
He fell from his bed with the blow, and the noise of his fall im- 
mediately brought his son and his servants into the room, by 

*« Auctor de Bello Africano, 87, et eeq. st Plutarch, in Catone, 70. 



31Q END OF THE WAR IN AFRICA. 

whose assistance he was raised from the ground, and an attempt 
was made (o bind up the wound. Their efforts to save him were 
vain ; for Cato no sooner had recovered his self-possession, than 
he toie open the wound again in so effectual a manner that he 
instantly expired. 

Such was the end of a man, Avhom a better philosophy, by 
Character or Cato. teaching him to struggle with his predominant 
faults instead of encouraging them, would have rendered truly 
amiable. He possessed the greatest integrity and firmness ; and, 
from the beginning of his political life, was never swayed by fear 
or interest to desert that which he considered the cause of liberty 
and justice. He is said to have foreseen Caesar's designs long be- 
before Ihey were generally suspected ; but his well-known ani- 
mosity against him rendered iiis authority on the subject less 
weighty ; and his zeal led him to miscalculate the strength of the 
commonwealth, when he earnestly advised the senate to adopt 
those measures which gave Caesar a pretence for beginning hos- 
tilities. During the civil war he had the rare merit of uniting to 
the sincerest ardour in the cause of his paity a steady regard to 
justice and humanity; he would not countenance cruehy 'or ra- 
pine because practised Joy his associates or coloured Avith pretences 
of public advantage. But the pride and coarseness oQiis mind, 
of which we have already given some instances in his oehaviour 
to his private friends, overshadowed the last scene of his life, and 
led him to indulge his selfish feelings by suicide, rather than live 
for the happiness of his family and friei ds, and mitigate, as far as 
lay in his power, the distressed condition of his country. His 
character, however, was so pure, and since Pompey's death so su- 
perior to all the leaders engaged with him in the same cause, that 
even his enemy's partisans could not refuse him their respect and 
praise ; and his name has become a favourite theme of panegyric 
in after-times, as the most upright and persevering defender of 
the liberties of Rome. 

Caesar meantime was advancing from Thapsus towards 
Endof thewarin Utica,^^ and had occupied without resistatice, on his 
^fr»<=*- march, the towns of Usceta and Adrumetum, in 

both of which he found considerable magazines of arn.'s and pro- 
visions. As he drew near to Utica,' he was met by li. Caesar, 
who implored his mercy ; and to whom, says his partisan, he 
readily granted it, according to his natural temper and habits of 
clemency. At the same time he spared the lives of Cato's son 
and of a number of other individuals who threw themselves on 
hismeicy ; but he levied heavy fines on those Roman merchants 
and citizens of other descriptions who had formed Cato's council, 
and had contributed money to the cause of the commonwealth. 

•• Aactor de Bello Africano, 89. 



RENEWAL OP THE CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN. 310 

He imposed also large contributions on the inhabitants of Tjeptis, 
Adrumetum, and Thapsus;-^' and sold by auction the property 
of Juba, and of all the Roman citizens resident in Mauritania who 
had borne arms in his service ; after which he reduced his king- 
dom to the form of a Roman province, and intrusted the govern- 
ment of it to C. Sallustius Crispus, the historian, whh the title of 
proconsul. On the other hand, Caesar bestowed rewards on the 
people of Zaraa for having excluded their sovereign from their 
walls ; and divided the territories of another Manritanian prince, 
who had been Juba's ally, between Bogud and P. Sitius.^" Hav- 
ing thus brought the war in Africa to a conclusion, he embarked 
at Utica on the thirteenth of June, and sailed to Sardinia, there 
to impose fresh fines, and to order confiscations against some 
towns and individuals that had assisted the party of his adversa- 
ries. He sailed from Sardinia again on the twenty-ninth of June, 
and after a tedious voyage of eight and twianty days,^' arrived at 
Rome about the twenty-seventh of July, or, according to the true 
calculation, about the end of May. 

From the date of Caesar's return from Africa to his assassina- 
tion, there is a period of somewhat less than two years ; and even 
of this short time nine months were engrossed by the renewal of 
the war in Spain, which obliged him to leave Rome once more, 
and contend for the security of his power at the point of the 
sword. He enjoyed the sovereignty, therefore, which he had so 
dearly purchased, during little more than one single year ; from 
the end of July, 707, to the middle of the winter, a period of be- 
tween seven and eight months, owing to the reformation of the 
calendar which he introduced during this interval ; and again, 
from October 708, to the ides of March in the following spring. 
After giving this outUne of the order of events, we shall first 
briefly notice the disturbances in Spain, and in other parts of the 
empire, by which the tranquillity of Caesar's sovereignty was in- 
terrupted ; and shall then endeavour to present olir readers with 
a general view of the nature of his government, and of the inter- 
nal state of Rome under his dominion ; which last subject will 
naturally lead us to trace the origin of the conspiracy formed 
against him, and to follow it up to the moment of its fatal termi- 
nation. 

The condition of Spain had become far from tranquil before 
the conclusion of the campaign in Africa, Cnaeus Renewal of the cmi 
Pompeius, who, as we have mentioned, was invest- ^a anf cfi" pompt" 
ed with a naval command, had been invited thither '"'• 
by some of the Spanish cities,*'^ which had taken part in the 
resistance offered against Q,. Cassius, Caesar's lieutenant, and 

59 Auctor de Bello Africano, 97. *' Auctor de.Bello Africano, 98. 

«» Appian, de Bello Civili, IV. 54. e* Dion Casaius, XLIII. 228. 



320 C^SAR GOES INTO SPAIN. 

which were apprehensive that their conduct, though not hitherto 
noticed, must necessarily have excited Caesar's resentment. Ac- 
cordingly Cn. Pompeius sailed from Africa to the barbarian 
islands/^ and succeeded in making himself master of them ; but 
being seized with an illness, he was detained there till after the 
defeat and death of Scipio, and the conclusion of the African 
campaign. When the tidings of Caesar's victory arrived in Spain, 
the party which had invited Pompeius to be their leader, finding 
that he was still delayed by sickness, resolved to seek out another 
chief; and for this purpose they fixed on T. Annius Scapula,^^ a 
man of great rank and influence in the province, and who had 
been deeply concerned in the opposition against the authority of 
Q,. Cassius. His own slaves and freedmen were a numerous 
body, and with them he first took up arms ; but his adherents 
daily became more formidable, being swelled partly by the acces- 
sion of Roman and native soldiers from Spain itself, and partly 
by the fugitives from Africa, who sought his standard as their last 
refuge. At length Pompeius himself appeared, and was acknow- 
ledged as commander-in-chief of the whole assembled force. The 
popularity of his name gained him the zealous support of the 
Spaniards ; and soldiers resorted to him from every quarter of the 
empire, as if it were reserved for the son of Pompey to revenge 
the fate of his father and of the commonwealth. Caesar's lieuten- 
ants, to whom he had intrusted the government of Spain, were 
unable to withstand the progress of the enemy ; and Caesar him- 
self was obliged to suspend his labours for the civil administra- 
tion of the empire, and once more appear at the head of an army. 
cssar leavos Rome, Hc sct out froui Romc, as has bccu already ob- 
and goes into Spain. ' scrvcd, about the cud of the year 707 ; and exerting 
his accustomed activity, he is said to have arrived at Obulco," 
near Cordnba, in the province of Farther Spain, in twenty-seven 
days from the time of his leaving the capital. His presence, as 
usual, encouraged those cities which still remained faithful to 
him, and restrained those which were inclining to the enemy. 
The troops which he found in Spain, added to those which fol- 
lowed him from Italy, formed an army superior to that of the 
enemy in the quality of its infantry, and in the numbers of its 
cavalry ; and Caesar therefore, as in his former campaigns, was 
anxious to bring on a general action ; and in order to accomplish 
this, whilst he was advancing his own cause at the same time in 
other respects, he employed himself in laying siege to some of the 
towns that were garrisoned by his opponents. In this manner he 
besieged and took Alegua, and one or two other places;" tillCn. 

83 Dion Cassius, Auctor de Bello Afri- De Bello Hispanicnsi, .33. Cicero, ad Fa- 
cano, 23. iniliares, IX. epist. XIII. 

" Auctor de Belio Alexandrine, 55. ^ Strabo, III. 169, edit Xyland. 

^ Auctor de Bell. Hispan. 6, et seq. 



BATTLE OP MUNDA. 321 

Pompeius, unwilling to discourage his partisans by appearing 
unable to oflFer any resistance to his enemy's enterprises, and hav- 
ing persuaded himself that the soldiers in Caesar's present army 
were no longer the same veterans who had conquered at Pharsa- 
lia or at Thapsus. was induced to offer battle in the neighbourhood 
of Munda. He disposed his army, however, upon Battle of Munda. 
ground so defensible by nature,^'' and his soldiers conducted them- 
selves so bravely, that the first attack of the enemy was vigor- 
ously repelled ; and it is said that Csesar dismounted from his 
horse, and by offering to expose his life as a common soldier in 
the front of the line, at last with difficulty rallied his men, and 
retrieved the fortune of the day.^* The victory, though hardly 
won, was complete and decisive. Labienus and Atius Yarus were 
killed in the field, and Cn. Pompeius was wounded, but effected 
his escape in a litter to Carteia. From thence, mistrusting the 
fidelity of the inhabitants, he endeavoured to withdraw by sea to 
a safer refuge,^^ but being pursued by a squadron of Csesar's, and 
being surprised at the very moment when his ships had put in to 
shore to obtain fresh supplies of water, his vessels were all taken 
or burnt, and he was obliged once more to pursue his flight by 
land. He at first attempted to defend himself with the aid of 
the few followers who still remained with him, on one of the 
strong positions which the country afforded ; but when his pur- 
suers began to construct regular works, under cover of which 
they might gain a footing on the high ground occupied by his 
party, he was forced to fly, and his men began to disperse on 
every side. His wound disabled him from escaping on foot, 
and the country was impracticable for a carriage, or even for 
a horse ; so that concealment was his only remaining chance 
of safety, and he took shelter in a cavern, in one of the wild 
and lonely glens among the mountains, such as have afforded 
a sure protection to the fugitives of a vanquished or oppressed 
party in various periods of Spanish history. But he was dis- 
covered by the information of some prisoners whom the enemy 
had taken, and was slaughtered in his place of ref- Death of cn. pom- 
uge. His head was cut off and presented to Caesar, p^'"'- 
who at that very moment was entering Hispalis in triumph ; and 
this bloody trophy being instantly by liis orders exhibited to the 
multitude, informed them that the ruin of Pompey's cause was com- 
plete. Scapula had put an end to his own life a short time before 
at Corduba,'" and Sex. Pompeius, the younger son of Pompey the 
Great, having fled from the same place on the news of the 
battle of Munda, sought a refuge amongst the laccetani or Lace- 

«T Auctor de Bell. Hispan. 2!), et seq. 69 Auctor de Bell. Ilispan. 37, 38, 39. 

•^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 55. Velleius Paterculus, ubi supra. 

70 Auctor de Bell. Hispan. 33. 



322 DISTURBANCES IN SYRIA 

tani/' one of the tribos of Hither Spain, who lived between the 
Pyrenees and the Ebro, in what is now a part of Navarre and 
Arragon. More fortunate than his brother, Sex, Pompeius was 
enabled, by the attachment of the natives, to baffle the vigilance 
of his pursuers, and soon to commence a predatory warfere, 
which became more serious after Caesar's departure from Spain, 
and gradually assumed the shape of an organized hostihty. But 
for the present he was reduced to the condition of a fugitive ; and 
Caesar pursued a course of executions and confiscations for some 
The whole of Spain is moulhs," till hc had dcstroycd cvcry appearance of 
slonf^ami^-ss^^re^ regular opposition, and had enriched himself and 
turns to Rome. laigcly rcwardcd those towns or tribes which had 
taken part with him in the late contest. The arrangements ne- 
cessary to be made of one kind or another, detained him in Spain 
till the autumn, so that, as we have already observed, he did not 
return to Rome till the month of October. 

There was one other part of the empire in which Caesar's au- 
Disturbances in Syria thoi'ltv was Still disputcd, uor was tranquillity ever 

excited by ft. Caecilius r ^^ ' x ui- i j • •. j • i • Tr ^- A i • 

Bassus. lully established m it during his hfetmie. On his 

hasty progress from Egypt towards Pontus, when he Avas preparing 
to attack Pharnaces, he had conferred the command of the province 
of Syria upon Sex. Cassar,'-'' a friend and connexion of his own. 
At this time there was a Roman knight residing at Tyre, of the 
name of d. Caecilius Bassus,''^ who had served in Porapey's army 
during the late campaign, and after the battle of Pharsalia had 
taken refuge in Syria. As belonging to the equestrian order, he 
was likely to have been engaged in commerce, and he probably 
had some friends or connexions in the great trading town of Tyre, 
which led him to fix on that place as his asylum. He was an 
active and enterprising man, and when reports began to be circu- 
lated that Caesar was in a state of great danger and difficulty in 
Africa," Bassus thought that he saw a favourable opportunity .for 
reviving the cause of Pompey in the east. His command of 
money enabled him easily to raise soldiers in these times of gen- 
eral disorder, and also to corrupt those of Sex. Caesar, as different 
detachments were successively placed in garrison at Tyre ; we 
are told also, that when his military preparations became so no- 
torious as to excite alarm, he satisfied Sex. Caesar by assuring 
him that they were intended only to assist Mithridates of Perga- 
mus in taking possession of his kingdom of the Bosphorus, which 
Caesar had bestowed on him as a reward for the services he had 
rendered him in his Egyptian campaign.''^ Suspicion being thus 

" Strabo, in. 170, edit. Xyland. Dion 74 Dion Cassius, XLVII. 342. Livy, 

Cassius, XLV. 275. Appian, de Beilo Epitome, CXIV. 

Civili, FV. 83, Cicero, ad Atticuin, XII. ^s Cicero, pro Deiotaro, 9. Dion Cas- 

epist. XXXVtr. sius, uhi supra. 

72 Dion Cassius. XLTfl. 233. 76 Auctor de Bell. Alexand. 78. 

73 Auctor de Belio Alexandrino, 66. 



EXCITED BY Q. C^CILIUS BASSUS. 333 

lulled asleep for the present, Bassus soon afterwards pretended to 
have received letters from Scipio, announcing the defeat and death 
of CsBsar in Africa, and bsstowing on himself the goverimient of 
Syria. Accordingly, by virtue of this imaginary commission, he 
took possession of Tyre ; and in a very short time won over to his 
side tlie whole army of Sex. Caesar, whose soldiers, corrupted by the 
money of his antagonist, murdered him, and then deserted to Bas- 
sus. In this manner a private individual, with no other means 
than the money and influence which he had acquired by his 
comrriercial dealings, became master of an army, and of the pro- 
vince of Syria. He fixed his head-quarters at Apamea,'^' a town 
of remarkable strength, situated on a hill rising out of a level 
country, and protected partly by the river Orontes, which flows 
almost round it, and partly by a tract of marsh or stagnant water, 
which obstructs the approach of an enemy. It commanded, be- 
sides, the resources of a most abundant district, which had long 
been famous for its wealth and fertility; and there were several 
other strong fortresses in its neighbourhood, the petty chiefs of 
which were induced by the money, or by the credit of Bassus, to 
support him in his enterprise. We are told, too,'^ that the chief of 
one ot the wandering Arab tribes, inhabiting the desert between 
Syria and the Euphrates, was bribed by promises of high pay to 
himself and his followers, to offer his services to the same cause ; 
nor did Bassus scruple to call in the more powerful succour of the 
sovereigns of Parthia, who were naturally glad to foment the in- 
ternal quarrels of the Romans, and who once or twice relieved 
Apamea by their sudden appearance, when Bassus was hard 
pressed by the forces employed by Csesar against him.''' Thus 
there were two private individuals acting a conspicuous part in two 
different extremities of the empire, and each indebted for his po- 
litical importance to the connexions with foreign princes which 
he had formed in the course of his commercial dealings. We 
have already noticed the services rendered to Caesar in Africa by 
P. Sitius, at the very time that Q,, Cascilius Bassus in Syria was 
organizing an opposition against liim. Other more important 
occupations prevented Caesar from employing a very considerable 
force to put him down ; and he continued, therefore, to retain 
possession of Apamea, and to command the troops which had 
deserted to him from Sex, Caesar, till C. Cassius, after the death 
of Caesar, became the head of the party of the commonwealth in 
Asia, when the superior fame and rank of Cassius induced the 
soldiers of Bassus to commit a second act of desertion, to abandon 
him, and put themselves under the command of Cassius,^" 

There are few more curious historical records, than that which 

" Strabo, XVI. 871. Dion Cassius, 79 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. IX. 
LXVII 342. 80 Cicero, ad Farailiares, XII. epiat. XII. 

** Dioa Cassius and Strabo, locis citatis. 



324 SKETCH OF THE STATE OF THE DIFFERENT PROVINCES, 

Evelyn, in his " Memoirs," has lefl of the state of England im- 
mediately after the great civil war. He gives a journal of an 
excursion which he made through the midland and norlhern 
counties just at that period ; and draws a most lively picture of 
the state of the country and of the towns, and of the marks of 
havoc and confiscation which naturally attended the decision of 
so obstinate a contest. But when we would strain our eyes to 
discover what was the condition of the Roman empire when the 
sword was at last sheathed, and the victory of Caesar was no 
longer disputed, we are obliged to turn away in disappointment, 
and can only indulge a vain regret, that the materials for obtain- 
ing a really valuable knowledge of ancient history are so exceed- 
ingly scanty. We have seen that Spain and Syria were even yet 
disturbed by the show of actual warfare ; that Sex. Pompeius 
was the chief of a formidable band of plunderers in the one 
coimtry, while Q,. Csecilius Bassus possessed in the other a strong 
and important city, and the command of a Roman legion. Before 
we return to Italy itself, we wish to glean a few facts illustrative 
of the condition of the other provinces of the empire, and to de- 
scribe the characters of some of the persons, to whose care Caesar 
had committed them. 

The countries on the eastern side of the Adriatic and the lo- 
sketchofthe state niau gulf, which had been so lately the principal 

of the different Pro- ^ r ^i • -l J i T» 

vinces. seat 01 the civil war, were now governed by P. 

Vatinius and Ser. Sulpicius, We have already mentioned the 
services which Vatinius had rendered to Caesar in lllyricum, when 
he succeeded A, Gabinius in the management of the war in that 
province, and obliged M, Octavius to abandon the contest and 
withdraw into Africa. He had been rewarded with a titular con- 
sulship during the last three months of the year 
yricum. 706,^' and was afterwards appointed to command 

the province of lllyricum, as proconsul. He was continually oc- 
cupied in reducing the strongholds of the neighbouring Dalma- 
tians,*'^ who had taken an active part against Caesar throughout 
the late war ; and it appears, too, that some Roman officers, who 
had probably taken refuge in lllyricum after the defeat of Pompey, 
weie carrying on a plundering and desultory warfare, accompa- 
nied with all that wanton cruelty which usually marks the last 
vindictive struggles of a vanquished party in a civil war. Achaia, 
under which name was included the whole of 
Achaia. Grcccc soutliwaid of Thermopylae, was at this sam6 

period under the government of Ser, Sulpicius. Sulpicius, the 
most distinguished lawyer of his day, had been one of those who 
remained in Italy when Pompey first withdrew into Greece, nor 
had he at any subsequent time been induced to follow him. The 

«i Dion CassiuB.LXII. 211. '» Cicero, ad Familiares, V. epist: X. 



ASIA. 325 

neutrality thus observed by a man of his high birth and character, 
was too grateful to Csesar to pass unrewarded; and when Q,. Fu- 
fius Calenus returned home to share the honours of the consul- 
ship with P. Vatinius, Caesar fixed upon Sulpicius as the most fit 
person to succeed him in the government of Greece.^ ^ Such a 
task was probably not an easy one : there were several distin- 
guished persons who had been involved in the defeat of Pompey,^* 
and who were now living in Greece in exile ; many again of the 
Greeks themselves had been forward in opposing Csesar,®^ and 
were to pay the penalty of their conduct by the forfeiture of their 
properties ; while the adherents of the victorious party could not, 
at once, lay aside the license to which the war had accustomed 
them, and still indulged themselves in frequent acts of lawless 
violence,^* which it might not be safe or practicable for Sulpicius 
to punish. Yet, on the whole, his professional attachment to the 
laws, and his moderate character, disposed him to alleviate, as 
far as possible, the sufferings of the people whom he governed ; 
and the state of Greece was, perhaps, enviable, when compared 
with that of some of the other provinces of the empire. 

Of the condition of Asia, little appears to be known, except 
that the province, called by that name, was now 
under the government of P. Ser villus Isauricus,^'' 
who had been Csesar's colleague in the consulship in the year 
705, and whom Cicero compliments on his beneficent and equita- 
ble administration. Deiotarus,^' king of Galatia, who had former- 
ly assisted Pompey in the civil war, but after the battle of Phar- 
salia had endeavoured to appease Caesar's anger by his active ser- 
vices in the war with Pharnaces, was about this time accused, by 
his own grandson, of having intended to assassinate Caesar, when 
passing through Asia Minor two years before, on his return from 
Egypt. Although he had been acknowledged as an independent 
sovereign by Caesar himself, yet Deiotarus was obliged to apply 
to Cicero, with whom he had long been familiarly acquainted, tO 
defend him against this charge, and the cause was tried by Csesar 
in his own house. It appears that nothing was determined im- 
mediately ; and as Caesar was forming plans for an expedition 
into Parthia, he may have deferred his judgment on Deiotarus till 
he should be himself in Asia, and should be able to ascertain more 
fully what decision would be most conducive to his own interests. 

. Caesar's late conquests in Africa had been intrusted (as we 

6J Cicero, ad Familiares, IV. epist. III. ^^ Magna est gladiorum licentia : sed 

IV. ; VI. epist. VI. in externis locis minor etiam ad facinus 

84 For instance, M. Marcellus, A. Tor- verecundia. Cicero, ad Familiares, IV. 

quatu?, Cn. Plancius. Vid. Ciceron. ad epist. IX. 

Famiiiarec, IV. epist. VII. XIV.; VI. 87 Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epiat. 

epist. I. LXVIII. 

*s Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epist. ^ Cicero, pro Deiotaro. 
XIX. 



326 CESAR'S TRIUMPHS. 

have already mentioned) to the command of C. 
*^^""'" Salliistius Crispiis the historian.^' His oppressions 

and extortions are said to have been carried to such a pitch, that 
he was more like a plunderer than a proconsul ; and the unfor- 
tunate inhabitants, finding the miseries of war succeeded by the 
tyranny of such a government, must have been amongst the most 
wretched of all the subjects of the Roman empire. 

The return of Cassar from Africa, in the end of July, 707, 
was almost immediately followed by his triumphs, 
sarstriump s. -^yj^jch hc uow Celebrated in commemoration of his 
various successes in Gaul,®" in Egypt, in Pontus, and in Africa, 
Each of these pageants occupied a separate day, and there was 
an interval of some days between them, that the interest of the 
people might be kept alive, and that each might pass off without 
weariness. In the first triumph, Vercingetorix,®' who had been 
made prisoner at the famous siege of Alesia six years before, was 
led amongst the captives in the procession, and was immediately 
afterwards put to death. It is mentioned that an accident happen- 
ed to Csesar's triumphal chariot on this occasion, by which he 
was nearly thrown out of it ; and so natural is superstition, even 
to men of the greatest natural abilities, if unenlightened by the 
knowledge of God, that he was accustomed,'^ ever afterwards, as 
soon as he had seated himself in any carriage, to repeat a certain 
form of words three times over, by way of a charm for the security 
of his journey. The irjury which the chariot had sustained, 
rendered it necessary that another should be substituted for it ; 
and the procession was so long delayed, that it was dark before 
the final ceremony of ascending into the capitol could take place. 
But the spectacle lost nothing by this circumstance ; for we are 
told that forty elephants were ranged in order on both sides of the 
way,®^ supporting, in their trunks, a number of candelabra filled 
with lights. It seems, however, that the accident of the morning 
had produced a strong impression on Ccesar's mind ; and that, 
with the feeling so common in ancient times of wishing by a 
voluntary humiliation to disarm the envy with which the gods 
were supposed to regard excessive prosperity, he climbed, or rather 
crawled, up the steps leading to the capitol upon his knees.'* In 
his Egyptian triumph, Arsinoe, the younger sister of Cleopatra, 
appeared amongst the prisoners, and excited a general feeling of 
compassion, which, together with Cassar's fondness for her sister, 
saved her ironi sharing the fate of Vercingetorix. The triumph 
over Phariiaces was rendered remarkable by the display of a 

89 Aucfor de Bello Africano, 97. Dion »' Dion CaFsius, XLIII. 293. 

Cassius. XLllI. 217. 92 Pliny, Hist. Natural. XXVIII. 3. 

* tiivy, tpitome, CXV. Suetonius, in *^ Suetonius, 37. 

Ctcsare, 37. " Dion Cassius, XLIII. 224. 



LARGESSES TO THE POPULACE. 327 

banner, with the famous words " Veni, Vidi, Yici ;"^' and we may- 
imagine that Csesar deUghted in representing his victory over the 
king of Pontus as so easily won, in order to depreciate Pompey's 
glory as the conqueror of Mithridates. In his African triumph, 
Juba, the son of the late king of Mauritania,^^ was the most dis- 
tinguished prisoner ; but his life was spared, and he afterwards 
became an historian of considerable eminence, and recovered his 
hereditary throne, with an accession of territory, from the favour of 
Augustus. The civil wars, according to the constant practice of 
the Romans, could not be the subject of a regular triumph ; but, 
if we may believe Appian,^'' pictures were exhibited in the pro- 
cession representing the deaths of Scipio, Petreius, and Cato, 
although their names were not mentioned in the list of conquered 
enemies, which, as usual, was displayed to the people as a part of 
the ceremony. Indignation was naturally excited by this indirect 
glorying at the deaths of some of the most distinguished citizens 
of the commonwealth ; but the splendour of the pageant drove 
all other considerations, we are told, from the eyes of the multi- 
tude ;^^ and when they were informed that Csesar had brought 
into the treasury, as the fruit of his conquests, a sum exceeding 
4,843,750Z. of our money,''^ few would be disposed to estimate 
justly the immense price of wickedness and misery at which this 
plunder had been purchased. 

His triumphs were followed by various largesses of provisions 
and money to the populace, and by a succession Largesses to the po- 
of splendid spectacles, which were perhaps equally dieS;'^'*" 
effectual in winning the affections of the multitude. Magnificent 
public entertainments were given, and the people were feasted, we 
are told, at two and twenty thousand tables j'"" besides which 
every one of the poorer citizens received a certain portion of meat,^" 
about two bushels and a half of corn, ten pounds of oil, and 3/. 
4s. Id. in money. A year's rent,^"^ or possibly a year's house-tax, 
was also remitted to every person in Rome who paid for his dwell- 
ing less than 16Z. 2s. l\d., and to every one in Italy who paid less 
than 4Z. Qs. S^d. ; or possibly the remission to the Italians was 
now given in addition to that which Caesar had already given to 
the Romans, according to Dion Cassius, before he set out for Africa, 
in the preceding winter.^"^ But it is said that he somewhat less- 

95 Suetonius, in Caesare, 37. i°2 Suetonius, in Caesare, 38. Dion 

96 Plutarch, in Caesare, 55. Strabo, Cassius, XLIL 209. 

XVIL 959. ^"3 It is not quite clear what was the na- 

97 De Bello Civili, IL 101. ture of the payment which Caesar remitted 

98 Dion Cassius, XLIIL 223. on this occasion. To have deprived all 
'^ Velleius Paterculus, IL landlords of a year's rent seems a measure 

100 Plutarch, in Caesare, 55. more violently iniquitous than Caesar was 

101 „ Visceratio," Conf. Suetonium, in likely to have sanctioned ; especially as 
Caesare, 38. he, or his partisan, represents this very 



22 



same thins as one of the mischievous 



328 LARGESSES TO THE SOLDIERS. 

ened the effects of these UberaUties by a previous scrutiny and 
reduction of the number of citizens who were to profit by them ; for 
finding that the hst of paupers at Rome/"* or of persons receiving 
rehef from the distributions of corn issued at the pubHc expense, 
amounted to three hundred and twenty thousand, he caused this 
account to be rigorously examined, and diminished it by about 
one-half: providing moreover by a law, that no new claimants on 
the public bounty should be admitted, unless when vacancies in 
the number now established should be occasioned by death. To 
his soldiers he gave at the rate of 16U. 9^. 2d. to each of the com- 
mon men ; 322/. I85. 4(/. to the centurions ; and 645/. I65. Sd. to 
the military tribunes. "^ The cavalry are said to have received 
at the rate of 193/. 155. a man. In addition to these presents in 
money, settlements in land were given to the army ; yet we are 
told that the soldiers were dissatisfied with the rewards conferred 
on them j^"^ and something of real bitterness mingled perhaps with 
the wild license of the moment, when, as they followed their 
leader in his triumphal procession, they sang doggerel verses at- 
tacking the infamous profligacy of his youth, reproached him 
with their miserable fare of roots at Dyrrhachium, and parodying 
the sentiment of the Stoics, told him that if he acted honestly he 
would be condemned for his treason, but if he played the villain 
he might win the throne. Already, too, they assumed so much 
of the self-importance of the guards of a military despot, that 
they murmured loudly against the extravagance of Caesar's spec- 
tacles ; and if we may believe Dion Cassius, they actually showed 
symptoms of mutiny, which were only suppressed by the vigour 
of their chief, in seizing one of them with his own hand, and 
ordering him to be executed immediately. Yet wiser and better 
citizens might have joined them in condemning the profusion of 

proposals of M. Caelius in his preetorship, but he does not say whether this was 
brought forward by him at the same time an act of the eovernment, or an arrange- 
with a law for the general abolition of all ment generally made between the land- 
debts, which exposed him to the censures lords and their tenants, in consideration of 
of those persons to whom Caesar had in- the temporary distress of the latter. Dion 
trusted the administration of the capital. Cassius, XLVIII. 362. 
Possibly it was a remission of all rents due ^^^ Suetonius, 4L Dion Cassius, XLIIL 
to the government, which may have been 224. 

the proprietor of a large portion of the ^^^ Appian, de Bello Civili, IL 102. 
land occupied by buildings in Rome, as The sum here stated appears enormous ; 
well as in many other towns in Italy, yet a natural correction of the text of Sue- 
Dion Cassius says, that in consequence of tonius, which in its present state is clearly 
the repeated conflicts which took place corrupt, makes his testimony exactly con- 
between the soldiers of Octavius Ca;sar firm that of Appian ; and all parts of the 
and the citizens, both in Rome and in empire had been plundered to furnish 
the other towns of Italy, after the Caesar with the means of enriching his 
battle of Philippi, in the course of soldiery. 

which a great many houses were burnt, '"6 Pliny, XIX. 8. Dion Cassius, XLIII. 

there was granted also a remission of rent 224. 226. Suetonius, in CsEsare, 49. 51. 
both in the capital and in the country towns ; 



SHOWS OP VARIOUS KINDS EXHIBITED TO THE PEOPLE. 339 

the entertainments now given to the multitude, and might have 
recognized the invariable policy of tyrants, in the conduct of Cgesar, 
thus pampering the populace with shows and feast- shows of various 
ings, while he was plundering and oppressmg the the'^peop^e'i"'^'^ '** 
rich, the respectable, and the industrious. He had built a forum, 
or great square, which was called after his own name, an amphi- 
theatre, and a temple in honour of Venus, giving her the epithet 
of Genitria:" or " the Ancestress," in allusion to the fabled descent 
of the Julian family from lulus, the son of iEneas. These vari- 
ous buildings were now to be opened, or consecrated ; and this, 
together with the pretence of paying honours to the memory of 
his daughter Julia,""' who had died about eight years before, 
furnished him with an occasion of gratifying the favourite taste of 
the multitude to the utmost. Dramatic entertain- Dramatic entertain- 
ments were exhibited in all the different quarters '"^"'^• 
of the city,'"* and were performed in several different languages, 
for the amusement of the numerous strangers assembled in the 
capital from all parts of the empire. It was in one of these per- 
formances that Dec. Laberius, a Roman knight, and well known 
as a writer of farces, was forced at Csesars's request to appear as 
an actor on the stage in one of his own plays ; and having thus 
forfeited his rank by becoming one of a profession which the 
Romans considered infamous, he recovered it again from Cassar as 
a reward for his condescension, and received besides a large present 
in money. But the dramatic spectacles were little regarded in 
comparison with the sports of the circus, and the sports of the amphi- 
amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the ti^eatre. 
exhibition of the naumachia. The hunting of different animals 
was continued during five days ; and it is said that the camelopard, 
or giraffe, was on this occasion for the first time exhibited at 
Rome.^"* On the last day a regular engagement took place, in 
which twenty elephants, thirty horsemen, and five hundred foot- 
soldiers fought on each side ; and at another time twenty ele- 
phants,"" mounted with their turrets, and assisted by sixty light- 
armed soldiers, were opposed to five hundred infantry and twenty 
horsemen. The combats of gladiators were also 
on the grandest scale ; and if we may believe Sue- «°-'^^^°f^''^di^'°^^- 
tonius, Furius Leptinus, a man whose father had been praetor, 
and Q,. Calpenus, a senator, fought in these contests amongst 
the hundreds of prisoners taken in war, or criminals condemned 
to die, who in general were the combatants. In like manner, the 
martial exercise, called the Pyrrhic dance, was performed by the 
sons of men of the highest rank in the provinces of Asia and 
Bithynia ; and many of the young Roman nobility appeared as 

i"7 Plutarch, . in Caesare, 55. Dion Gas- ^"^ Dion Cassius, ubi supra, 
sius, XLIII. 225. "" Pliny, VIII. 7. 

108 Suetonius, in Caesare, 39. 



330 POWERS AND HONOURS BESTOWED ON C^SAR. 

Naumachia.or drivers of chariots in the races of the circus. But 
sea-fight. ' ^jje uaumachia, or seat-fight, excited greater admi- 

ration than even the combats of the gladiators or of the elephants. 
An immense pond or lake was dug near the Tiber, and having 
been filled with water, ships of war, of different sizes, of which 
some are said to have been quadriremes, or vessels with four rows 
of oars, were introduced upon it. Two fleets were formed, one 
consisting of Egyptians, and the other of Tyrians ; and it is said 
that there were on board of each two thousand rovvers,^'^ and one 
thousand fighting men, who engaged with one another, and dis- 
played all the horrors of real warfare. Even the habitual inhu- 
manity of the Romans was shocked, we are told, in some measm'e, 
by this enormous and wanton effusion of blood j"^ yet they were 
much more shocked, it is added, at the thought of the vast sums 
of money which were thus prodigally expended. Amongst other 
instances of magnificence it is mentioned, that the whole forum 
in which the gladiators fought, together with the whole length of 
the Yia Sacra, was covered over with awnings to protect the 
spectators from the sun ;'*^ and some accounts which Dion Cassius 
had seen, added the incredible circumstance that these awnings 
were made of silk. Yet, however justly there might have existed 
a partial and temporary feeling of indignation or disgust at so 
much prodigality and cruelty, the entertainments were altogether 
so attractive, that the multitudes which flocked to Rome to wit- 
ness them were obliged to live in booths or tents, with which they 
lined the roads near the capital, as well as the principal streets ;^'^ 
and many lives were continually lost from the pressure of the 
crowd, two senators, it is said, perishing amongst the rest in this 
manner. One circumstance yet remains to be told, in order to 
complete the picture of these festivities. For some cause, which 
Human sacrifices Diou Cassius could uot leam, human sacrifices were 

offered in the Cam- • i i ^ i_ i t i ^ 

pusMartius. judgcd to DC uccessary, aud accordmgly two men 

were offered up in the Campus Martins, by the pontifices and the 
priest of Mars."^ Such were the scenes exhibited in the capital 
of the civilized world, under the express direction of the sovereign 
of the empire, himself a man of the highest and most cultivated 
intellect in his dominions. 

We have called Caesar the sovereign of the empire, for, inde- 
powers and honours pcudently of that actual power which his sword 
bestowed on ca.-8ar. j^j^jj Conferred on him, the senate, since the tidings 
of his successes in Africa, had showered upon him all the digni- 
ties and offices of the commonwealth. He had been appointed 
dictator for ten years, "^ and Prafectus Morutn, or superintend- 
in Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 102. "s Dion Cassius, XLIII. 226. 
"2 Dion Cassius, XLIII. 225, 226. "« Dion Cassius, XLIII. 220. Cicero, 
"3 Pliny, XIX. 1. ad Familiares, IX. epist. XV. 
i'< Suetonius, 39. 



AIM OF SYLLA'S POLICY. 33 1 

ent of public manners and morals, with the whole vast authority 
formerly enjoyed by the censors, for three years. He was to 
nominate the other magistrates, who were before elected by the 
people, althoug|i it appears that he did not avail himself of this 
power to its full extent, but with the exception bf the consuls, 
allowed all other public officers to be appointed half by the tribes, 
as usual, and half by himself."^ He was allowed to have his 
curule chair in the senate placed on a level with those of the con- 
suls, and he was entitled to deliver his opinion before every other 
person in the debates. To all these were added some of those 
profane and disgraceful flatteries''^ which were afterwards so 
commonly bestowed on the Roman emperors. His statue, raised 
upon a figure representing the earth, was placed in the capitol 
opposite to the statue of Jupiter, and on it was the inscription, 
" He is a demigod." Other divine honours were voted to him, 
either now, or after his return from the campaign against the sons 
of Pompey, in Spain. His statues were carried, together with 
those of the gods, in the processions of the circus, temples and 
altars were dedicated to him, and priests were appointed to super- 
intend his worship. These things he received with a vanity 
which affords a striking contrast to the contemptuous pride of 
Sylla. Csesar took a pleasure in receiving every token of homage, 
and in contemplating with childish delight the gaudy honours 
with which he was invested . It was a part of the prize which 
he had coveted, and which he had committed so many crimes to 
gain ; nor did the possession of real power seem to give him 
greater delight than the enjoyment of these forced, and therefore 
worthless, flatteries. 

When Sylla had raised himself to the supreme power, there 
was a definite object before him which he never lost sight of — 
the depression of the popular party, and the strengthening the 
aristocracy ; and when he had accomplished these ends he laid 
aside his individual sovereignty, and took his station as the chief 
of that part of the commonwealth on which he had conferred an 
absolute ascendency. But Caesar's policy was entirely selfish : 
he could not pretend to act for the benefit of the aristocracy, or of 
the lower orders. There were no grievances in the old constitu- 
tion which could be redressed only by his despotism ; there had 
been no offence committed by the senate and people of Rome 
which deserved that their Hberties should be surrendered into the 
hands of one profligate individual. Those therefore who draw 
comparisons between Sylla's proscriptions and Cassar's clemency, 
forget the utterly different circumstances in which the two dicta- 
tors were placed. Wicked as Sylla's cruelties were, they were a 
retaliation for former atrocities, or a security for the establishment 

"7 Suetonius, 41. 'is Dion Cassius, 41. Suetonius, 76. 



332 DISTRIBUTION OF LANDS TO CJESAR'S SOLDIERS. 

of the interests of the high aristocratical party at Rome. The 
Samnites were i)utchered to maintain the ascendency of the Ro- 
mans over the Italian aUies ; the proscription lists were opened 
to exterminate, if possible, the adherents of the popular faction, 
who had abetted the violences of Sulpicius and Cinna, and had 
so lately trampled the nobility under their feet. But after the 
deaths of Pompey, of Scipio, of L. Domitius, of M. Bibulus, of L. 
Lentulus, of M. Cato, and of all the most eminent citizens of the 
commonwealth, whom could Caesar wish to proscribe ? His own 
wrongs, even if we were to admit his own statement, had been 
abundantly revenged already ; the security of his government 
could not be insured by massacres, when every one seemed ready 
to submit to his power; and if he had wished to get rid of all. 
those whose interests were incompatible with his own, he must 
have destroyed every free citizen in the empire. Caesar's policy 
was to draw a veil over the past, as far as possible ; to conciliate, 
by an apparent clemency, those whom he held in subjection ; and 
to invest himself, as early as he could, with all the splendour and 
popularity which attend a prince of commanding abilities ruling 
over a great empire. Had he but retained a small military force 
about his person, to save him from the danger of assassination, 
there was no probability that his power would ever have been dis- 
turbed by any national resistance ; he might have died, like Au- 
gustus, in a peaceful old age, quietly enjoying the imperial crown, 
and might have transmitted his dominions to his successor, with- 
out the intervention of that period of misery which elapsed, be- 
tween his murder and the final exaltation of his nephew Octa- 
vius, after the battle of Actium. 

One of the most necessary measures for the security of 
Distribution of lands Caesar's government, was the granting settlements 
to Caesar's soldiers, ^f lands lo his victorious soldiers. He did not wish 
to plant them all together in any one part of Italy ; ''^ partly that by 
being dispersed into different quarters they might be less likely to 
remember their own power, and attempt to overthrow the throne 
which they had raised ; and partly in order to avoid the odium of 
expelling a large body of the lawful occupants of the soil in order 
to make room for them. It was professed that for this purpose 
Caesar could find land enough amongst the forfeited estates of the 
adherents of Pompey, or in those parts of Italy and Cisalpine 
Gaul which were the property of the commonwealth. But it ap- 
pears that the commissioners whom he appointed to manage this 
business, might extend, with little control, the limits of what 
they chose to call national or confiscated lands ; and thus we find 
them dividing out the districts of Veii and Capena ;'"" threatening 

n' Suetonius, 38. Dion Cassius, XLII. '20 Cicero, ad Familiares, IX. epist. 
210. Appian, II. 94. XVII. 



PURCHASES OP FORFEITED PROPERTY. 333 

the neighbourhood of Tusculum, so that Cicero entertained some 
fears for the safety of his own villa ; seizing on the estates in Cis- 
alpine Gaul/'^' which belonged to the corporation of the town of 
Atella, in Campania ; claiming the whole territory of Volaterrse,'^^ 
because Sylla had decreed its confiscation, although it had since 
been protected by an especial law passed by Cassar himself in his 
first consulship ; and by a still more striking instance of arbitrary 
power, marking out for distribution a property which had already- 
been sold by public auction under Caesar's authority, ^^^ as belong- 
ing to an adherent of Pompey ; and had been purchased by C. 
Albinus, a senator, in the natural confidence that Caesar would 
cause the validity of such sales to be religiously observed, inas- 
much as his own credit and interest were concerned in maintain- 
ing his own acts. But in this manner, at whatever expense of 
individual oppression and misery, the veterans were provided for .; 
and the favour of the army was conciliated towards a chief, 
whose sole dependence was on their support, and who had shown 
himself ready to repay their services with the rewards which 
they most coveted. 

It is not possible to estimate the amount of property forfeited 
in different parts of the empire, on account of the Purchases of forfeited 
support given by its owners to the party of Pompey. adSnts!'^ caesar-a 
At Rome the sales of houses and lands were constantly going on, 
and as it was naturally considered odious to become a purchaser, ^^* 
monied men of low character, and some of Caesar's partisans, who 
cared not for public opinion, were able to buy splendid posses- 
sions at a very low price. It is said that M. Antonius,^'^^ having 
thus bought the house which had belonged to Pompey, was very 
unwilling to pay the price of it ; presuming that his services to 
Caesar entitled him to share in his spoils gratuitously. But Caesar, 
on his return from Africa, insisted absolutely on the payment 
being made ; and when Antonius still demurred, he ordered a 
military guard to take possession of his property. It was now 
time to give up the plea of right, and to appeal to Caesar's forbear- 
ance, that he would not press for immediate payment ; and Caesar, 
whose main objection was to the principle on which Antonius had 
before refused to pay, having no wish to distress so useful an adher- 
ent, readily allowed him a longer time to discharge his debt. It 
does not appear that it was ever paid ; for the profligacy of Anto- 
nius kept him always poor, and Caesar did not wish to exasperate 
him, and to run the risk of ofifending a large party among his 
principal officers, by seeming to grudge them any portion of the 
fruits of his usurpation. We are told that, whilst Caesar was in 

121 Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epist. 123 Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epist. 
VII. VIII. 

122 Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epist. 124 Cicero, ad Atticum, XII. epist. III. 
IV. 125 Cicero, Philippic. II. 29. 



334 LIVES OP CESAR'S PRINCIPAL ADHERENTS. 

Spain, '2® Antonius proceeded as far Narbo, in Gaul, to join him^ 
but went no further ; and after staying there some time returned 
to Ro|ne, in order to prevent the sale of his property, with which 
he was at that period threatened for his insolvency. During his 
stay at Narbo,"'' he is said to have communicated with C. Tre- 
bonius some design against Caesar's life ; and it was owing to this 
circumstance that Trebonius afterwards led him aside out of the 
senate house, when Ceesar was assassinated, supposing that he, 
who had once himself proposed the very same deed, would feel no 
regret when it was carried into execution. But it is not unlikely 
that some among the conspirators were actuated by the same mo- 
tives which had led Antonius to contemplate the murder of Cassar ; 
and that it was the creditor rather than the tyrant whom they 
wished to destroy. Be this as it may, the friends of Csesar seized 
largely upon the spoils of the defenders of the commonwealth ; 
and although in many instances the property thus gained was 
speedily dissipated, yet the scandal and the suffering occasioned 
by these proceedings was great and deplorable. 

We shall take this opportunity of noticing some of those per- 
sketch of the lives of SOUS wlio had been Cassar's principal supporters in 
hfren'ts. ^"""""^ ^'^" thc civll War, and who were now raised by his 
victory to the highest situations in the commonwealth. Of all 
these, M. Antonius was the most distinguished. 
M. Antonius. jj^ ^^^ tceu, ueccssarily, often mentioned already 

in the course of this history ; and we have seen that his flight 
from Rome during his tribuneship, furnished Cassar with a pre- 
tence for commencing his rebellion in the ^'■ear 704 ; that he was 
afterwards intnisted with the government of Italy during Cassar's 
absence in Spain in the same year ; that he held a high command 
in Caesar's army in the subsequent campaign in Greece ; and that, 
after the battle of Pharsalia, he carried the greatest part of the 
victorious legions back to Italy, and enjoyed the government of 
that country for the second time till the return of Cassar from 
Egypt in the autumn of 706. He was then named master of the 
horse to Caesar in his second dictatorship ; but he did not follow 
him into Africa, and employed himself, during his stay at Rome, 
in wasting, amidst the grossest excesses, the property which he 
had purchased at Csesar's auctions. Next to Antonius we may 
rank P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, 
whose early profligacies and extravagancies had 
led him to join Cfesar at the beginning of his rebellion as the 
natural patron of men of broken fortunes ; Avho had since fought 
under him at Pharsalia, "^^ had distinguished himself by his revo- 
lutionary proceedings when tribune, during Caesar's absence in 

126 Cicero, Philippic. 30, 31. Ad Atti- »27 Cicero, Philippic. 14. 
cum, XII. epist. XVIII. i28 Cicero, Philippic. II. 30. 



^MILIUS LEPIDUS, C. VIBIUS PANSA, A. HIRTIUS. 335 

Egypt, and had afterwards gone with him into Africa, and had 
served under him through the whole of that campaign. On his 
return to Italy, after Caesar's final victory, he appears to have 
lived in a style of great magnificence, and the excellence of his en- 
tertainments is recorded by Cicero,^24 ^^j^q g^^ ti^jg ^ij^jg often visited 
him, and through him, and one or two other friends, maintained 
a friendly intercourse with the prevailing party. M. ^milius 
Lepidus is entitled to our notice, more from the 

, ^ , . . 1 • 1 • , i'. M. ^milius Lepidus. 

elevated situation to which circumstances aiter- 
wards raised him, than from any merit or abilities of his own. 
Having been praetor at the beginning of the rebellion, he had re- 
mained at Rome when the consuls and the great majority of the 
senate left it to follow Pompey ;'^° and when Cassar returned from 
Spain, towards the end of the year 704, Lepidus presided at the 
comitia, which conferred on him the office of dictator. For thus 
giving the sanction of a lawful magistrate to Caesar's proceedings, 
he was rewarded with the government of the province of Hither , 
Spain, '^' which he retained for two years: and having made 
himself useful in quieting the disturbances occasioned by the 
unpopularity of Q,. Cassius, he received the honours of a triumph 
on his return to Rome, and was named Caesar's colleague in the 
consulship for the year 707. This dignity he was now enjoying ; 
and when Caesar again set out for Spain, at the close of the year, 
being then invested with the dictatorship, Lepidus was appointed 
his master of the horse, and was intrusted with the care of the 
capital during his absence. The principal partisans of Ceesar are 
enumerated by Cicero in one of his letters,' ^'^ where we find the 
names of Pansa, Hirtius, Balbus, Oppius, Matius, and Postumius. 
C. Vibius Pansa had been tribune in the year 702, and being 
already devoted to the interests of Caesar, he inter- 

1,. . ^ , ,., , C. Vibius Pansa. 

posed his negative upon some 01 the earliest resolu- 
tions passed by the senate, '^^ with a view to the appointment of 
a new proconsul in the province of Gaul. We know not how 
actively he was engaged in the civil war ; bu,t it appears that he 
preserved, through the whole it, an unblemished character,'-''^ and 
so distinguished himself by various acts of kindness and pro- 
tection towards distressed individuals of the vanquished party, 
that when he was appointed to succeed M. Brutus in the govern- 
ment of Cisalpine Gaul, in the year 708, he received from the 
people, on leaving Rome, the liveliest tokens of their good-will 
and gratitude. A. Hirtius was also a friend of . . 

Caesar before the civil war broke out, and was with 

129 Ad Familiares, IX. epist. XVI. i33 Cicero, ad Familiares, VIII. epist. 

130 Cicero, ad Atticum, IX. epist. IX. VlII. 

Dion Cassius, XLI. 170. '34 Cicero, ad Familiares, XV. epist. 

131 Dion Cassius, XLIII. 214. Auctor XVII. XIX. Ad Atticum, XII. epist. 
de Bello Alexand. 59. XXVII. 

138 Ad Familiares, VI. epist. XII. 



336 L. CORNELIUS BALBUS. 

him in Gaul in the year 705,'^^ from whence he was despatched 
to Rome, to make arrangements with some of Caesar's partisans 
in the capital, and returned to Caesar immediately after, so that 
he was probably with him when he first began his rebellion. We 
hear of him again as residing in Italy in the year 707,'^^ when he, 
like Dolabella, was famous for the sumptuousness of his table, and 
flattered Cicero's vanity by coming frequently to receive instruc- 
tions from him in the art of oratory. He is known as the author 
of the eighth book of the " Commentaries of Caesar's Wars in 
Gaul;"'" and was by some said to have written also those narra- 
tives of the campaigns in Egypt, Africa, and Spain, to which we 
have so often referred in our account of those events. He also 
took upon himself to write an invective against Cato in answer to 
Cicero's panegyric on him;'^^ and he is said to have displayed 
some talent in the work, but to have incurred much greater ridi- 
cule, for the evident spirit of fiatter}?" to Caesar by which it was 
dictated. Both Hirtius and Pansa appeared inclined, after Caesar's 
death, to acknowledge the authority of the old constitution ; they 
were both consuls together in the year 710, and both perished in 
the actions fought at Mutina, when commanding the armies of the 
commonwealth against the rebellious attempts of M. Antonius. 
The names of Balbus and Oppius are generally coupled together 
in Cicero's letters, as if either personal or political friendship had 
established the closest union between them. L. Cornelius Balbus 
was a native of Spain, and by birth a citizen of 

L. Cornelius Balbus. ^^ -, tt t- -iti- i^- .i • ^ 

Gades. He distinguished himself m the service oi 
the Roman government in the war so long carried on against 
Sertorius, and was rewarded by Pompey with "the rights of a 
Roman citizen. '^^ From this period he removed to Rome, where 
he lived in a style of affluence, and, as it appears, was exposed 
to some udium on account of his wealth and luxury.'^" He soon 
became acquainted with Caesar, to whom, perhaps, his money 
enabled him to be useful ; and his intimacy with him was already 
firmly established, when Caesar, after his praetorship, obtained the 
province of the Farther Spain ; for we find that Caesar conferred 
many kindnesses for his sake on his native city Gades.'^' When 
Caesar was afterwards consul, Balbus was one of those whom he 
most warmly patronized ; and when, in the year 697, his title to 
the character of a Roman citizen was disputed in a court of jus- 
tice, by the instigation, probably, of those who hated him as 
Caesar's friend, Crassus, Pompey, and Cicero pleaded for him in 
his defence. Whilst Caesar was in Gaul, Balbus occasionally 

135 Cicero, ad Atticum, VII. epist. IV. '33 Cicero, ad Atticum, XII. epist. XL. 

«36 Cicero, ad Atticum, XII. epist. II. XLt. XLIV. XLV. 
Ad Familiares, VII. epist. XXXIII. ; IX. '39 Cicero, pro Balbo, 2,3. 
epist. XVI. XVni. XX. '« Cicero, pro Balbo, 25. 

137 Suetonius, in CcEsare, 56. '^' Cicero, pro Balbo, 19. 



C. OPPIUS-C. MATIUS. 337 

visited him,'" and found opportunities, we may suppose, of adding 
to his fortune from the plunder of that country and Britain ; for 
Cicero, in one of his letters, "^ alludes to the gardens and a Tus- 
culan villa of the favourite, as the fruits of Caesar's friendship. 
When the civil war broke out, he remained at Rome, and was not 
required by Cassar to take any active part in the quarrel,"* as he 
was under great obligations to Pompey, and to L. Cornelius Len- 
tulus, then consul, from whom he had taken his name when he 
became a Roman citizen. But he was always highly valued by 
Caesar, and possessed great influence with him ; insomuch, that 
Cicero relied chiefly on his interest to procure for him the favour 
of the conqueror after the battle of Pharsalia.'*^ He was an Epi- 
curean in principle and in practice, building splendid villas after 
Caesar's victory in Africa, '<= and enjoying the gifts of fortune to 
the uttermost. According to the philosophy which he professed, 
he seems to have been a selfish but easy tempered man, willing to 
keep up a friendly intercourse with persons of all parties, and 
studying to preserve his fortune unhurt through all the political 
changes which he witnessed. In this object he was fully success- 
ful ; for after the battle of Philippi he obtained the title of consul 
from M, Antonius and Octavius in the year 713,'*^ being the first 
individual who rose to that honour without being an Italian or a 
Roman citizen by birth ; and at his death he was rich enough to 
bequeath the sum of 16s. Id. to every individual of the Roman 
people. 

His associate, Oppius, was a man of mean, or at least of hum- 
ble birth,"* and apparently became acquainted with c. oppius. 
Caesar by furnishing him with money at a time his profligacies 
were continually draining his means and ruining his credit. 
When Cassar was in Gaul, Oppius seems to have been employed 
by him as his agent at Rome,'" and was in the habit of forward- 
ing the letters which passed between him and his principal ofii- 
cers and their friends in the capital. Like Balbus, he enjoyed the 
confidence of Caesar without interruption, and his name is con- 
stantly mentioned as that of a person whose influence in the 
internal administration of affairs was very considerable. But we 
have been unable to find any particulars recorded of him which 
throw light upon his individual character. 

C. Matius was a citizen of the equestrian order,^^'' and became, 
at an early period of his life, acquainted with c. Matius. 

"2 Cicero, Epist. ad Q. Fratrem, III. i« Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 376, Pliny, 

epist. I. VII. 43. Velleius Paterculus, II. 51. 

U3 Ad Atticum, VII. epist. VII. "s Cicero, ad Atticum, IX. epist. VII. 

i« Ad Atticum, IX. epist. VII. Tacitus, Annal. XII. 60. 

i« Ad Atticum, XI. epist. VII. VIII. i49 Cicero, ad Q. Fratrem, III. epist. I. 

&c. 150 Tacitus, Annal. XII. 60. 

i« Ad Atticum, XII. epist. II. 



338 posTUMius. 

Caesar. He was with him for some time in Gaul,'^' and exerted 
himself at that period to reconcile him to Cicero, for whom he 
entertained an old regard. At the beginning of the civil war he 
did his utmost to preserve peace ; but when his efforts proved 
fruitless, a most false estimate of the claims of private friendship 
led him to follow Caesar, though at the same time he disapproved 
of his cause. He does not appear, however, to have taken much 
part in the war, nor did he acquire either riches or honours by its 
event; but availed himself of his influence with the conqueror to 
mitigate the sufferings of the vanquished party, and to recommend 
a system of clemency. After the death of Caesar, when his as- 
sassins were at the height of their power, Matins never disguised 
his sorrow for the loss of his friend, and was one of the first per- 
sons to notice and support C. Octavius, when he cajne forward to 
claim the name and inheritance of his uncle. Octavius did not 
forget his kindness, but lived on terms of friendship with him'^'^ 
when the course of events had raised him to the imperial throne : 
and Matius lived to old age, possessed of fortune and influence, 
without reproach, amusing himself with his gardens and trees, 
and, like our own Evelyn, leaving a name behind him for his at- 
tention to the practice of horticulture and the ornamenting of plea- 
sure grounds. 

Of Postumius we have been able to collect no other notices 
postumius. than that he was employed by Caesar in the civil 

war,^^^ and after his death undertook, together with C. Matius, 
the directions of the games which weie celebrated by Octavius in 
honour of his uncle's victories. 

One reflection naturally presents itself when we read over this 
Hst of names, hitherto unknown in Roman history, and now 
raised to the highest eminence of wealth and political importance. 
With all the misery which they had occasioned, the civil wars 
had yet produced the beneficial effect of depriving the oligarchy 
of great Roman families of that predominant share of power and 
honours which they had been accustomed to enjoy. In times of 
commotion, men of wealth, or of personal qualifications, naturally 
made their way to distinction and greatness ; and more monied 
men and foreigners were thus introduced into the highest class of 
society, and gave a severe wound to that narrow aristocratical 
spirit which would perpetuate nobility in one particular caste, and 
considers it as a profanation to admit individuals taken from the 
mass of the people into the ranks of this privileged order. It was 
a general benefit to the provinces of the Roman empire Miien 
Balbus obtained the consulship ; it was a general elevation of the 
commercial and monied classes of the Roman people, when Op- 

151 Cicero, ad Faniiliares, XI. epist. 1^3 Appian.de Bello Civili, II. 58. Cice- 
XXVII. XXVIII. ro, ad Atticum, XV. epist. II. 

152 Pliny, XII. 2 ; XV. 14. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF CESAR'S ADHERENTS. 339 

pins and Matius were raised to a degree of power and importance 
above the families of the oldest nobility in the commonwealth ; 
while, at the same time, it was a fortunate circumstance towards 
maintaining a just, but not excessive respect for noble ancestry, 
that the person who had seized the very highest place in the 
republic, was one whose birth made him on a level with the 
proudest of the patricians, and thus rendered his sway less galling 
than if his abilities and crimes alone had exalted him above 
them. 

It may be remarked, also, that almost all the friends of 
Caesar whom we have enumerated, were men of Epicurean 
principles ; and the same may be said of T. Pomponius Atti- 
cus and C. Mecsenas, two of the most distinguished individuals 
of the equestrian order, who flourished about this same period. 
The doctrines of Epicurus naturally suited a class of men who 
enjoyed wealth without political dignity ; and such was the 
general character of the equestrian order, to which the persons 
of whom we have been speaking originally belonged. Where 
these principles were united with an amiable temper and kindly 
feelings, the mischief to which they led was either indolence and 
a sort of elegant selfishness, or, in the most favourable circum- 
stances, it was a preference of feeling to principle, and a habit of 
substituting kind and generous actions for the harder task of bal- 
ancing the claims of conflicting duties, and following that which 
was right, rather than that which was agreeable. It is probable 
that Matius and Pansa thought that their conduct in supporting 
Csesar was amply atoned for by their acts of personal kindness 
and disinterestedness after his victory ; so prone are men to pur- 
chase the privilege of declining a painful duty by the practice of 
those amiable virtues which confer at once the greatest self- 
complacency on themselves, and most attract the admiration of 
others. This tendency was especially encouraged by the doc- 
trines of Epicurus, which making pleasure the end of human 
conduct, represented virtue as the surest means of attaining it. 
Men of coarser and viler natures abused this philosophy, as was 
natural, far more grossly ; but its evil tendency was most shown 
in the lives of its best disciples : for they who believed virtue to 
be indeed the truest road to pleasure, were yet misled by per- 
ceiving that the virtues most agreeable to their natures, led them 
to pleasure most readily ; and, content with the practice of these, 
they failed altogether in assigning to each virtue its proper com- 
parative rank, and in disciplining their natures to choose their 
highest duty, when the gratification of their intellect or their 
feelings was to be the necessary sacrifice. 

Meantime Csesar proceeded to turn his attention to the general 
settlement of the commonwealth, and, like Sylla, to ^awsami regulations 
attempt to terminate the disorders from which he ofcaesar. 



340 LAWS AND REGULATIONS OF C^SAR. 

had now nothing further to gain. With this view he proposed 
and carried a law, restricting to two years the term during which 
any command in the provinces might be held;'^* and ordering 
that all those provinces which were governed by praetors or pro- 
praetors should be held only for one year. But as he had himself 
marched with his army out of his province by his own sole au- 
thority, in open defiance of the Cornelian law of Sylla, which 
rendered such conduct treasonable, so a popular adventurer, or an 
able and ambitious general, would not fail to procure or retain the 
command of a province for as long a time as might suit his pur- 
poses, notwithstanding the prohibitions of this law of Caesar. 
Another law in which also the example of Sylla was followed, 
proposed to increase the severity of the criminal code.^" Wilful 
murderers were to incur the forfeiture of all their property, in ad- 
dition to the penalty of exile, which had hitherto been the utmost 
extent of punishment legally inflicted on the most enormous 
crimes ; other criminals, when banished, were to forfeit the half 
of their fortunes ; and persons condemned for disturbing the public 
peace,'^^ or for any other of those offences against the public welfare 
included under the term " Majestas iniminuta,^^ or " Icesa,^^ were 
to be expelled from Italy by the form of forbidding them the use 
of fire and water within so many miles of the capital. But this 
strictness ill accorded with the indemnities which he had himself 
granted to so many persons condemned for bribery and other 
offences ;'^^ or with his reversing the sentences of degradation 
formerly passed by the censors upon several who had since 
served him in the civil war. A third law, which was most com- 
pletely at variance with the popular principles on which he had 
professed heretofore to act, contained an alteration of the Aurelian 
law respecting the persons to whom the judicial power was to be 
intrusted. By that law, passed as we have seen in the first con- 
sulship of Pompey and Crassus (u.c. 683), the judges were to be 
chosen from the senate, the equestrian order, and from a descrip- 
tion of men among the plebeians who possessed a competent for- 
tune, and were known by the name of Trihuni j^Erarii. But 
Caesar now made the Trihuni JEra?-ii no longer eligible, and 
confined the judicial power exclusively to the members of the 
senate, or of the equestrian order.'** Another of Cajsar's mea- 
sures was directed against extravagance in the expenses of the 
table, being a renewal and an enforcement of the old sumptuary 
laws. Intemperance in eating and drinking was not Caesars fa- 
vourite sensuality ; and perhaps his feelings as a soldier may have 
made him dislike an indulgence which he might think incon- 
sistent with the hardiness of a military nation. But he found 

154 Cicero, Philippic. L 8. '5^' Suetonius, 41. 

155 Suetonius, in Caesare, 42. '58 Suetonius, 41. Dion Cassius, XLIIL 
15S Cicero, Philippic. L 10. 226. 



LAWS AND REGULATIONS OP CiESAR. 341 

that the impatience which men feel at being controlled by law, in 
a matter so entirely of a domestic nature, was too strong in this 
point for his authority ; and learning that as soon as he left Rome 
his enactments were disregarded, he wrote angrily from Spain to 
say that he was resolved henceforward to remain constantly in 
the capital, that his laws might be duly observed ;^" and after- 
wards, he is said not only to have posted guards at the markets, 
to prevent the sale of any forbidden articles,'^" but sometimes to 
have sent his lictors and soldiers into private houses, and to have 
actually carried off from the table any dishes which exceeded the 
allowed expense of private entertainments. There were others 
of his acts which excited great odium against him at the time, 
and which proceeded indeed, very probably, from selfish motives ; 
but which were really wise and liberal, and loudly called for by the 
existing circumstances of the empire. He conferred the rights of 
Roman citizenship on a whole legion of soldiers whom he had rais- 
ed in Transalpine Gaul, and called by the name of the AlaudaB.^^' 
He bestowed also the same privilege on many of the inhabitants 
of Cisalpine Gaul, and intended to communicate it to all the peo- 
ple within the Alps,'«^ a purpose which was carried into effect 
soon after his death by M. Antonius and Octavius. He gave also 
the inferior distinction of the rights of Latin citizenship, " Jus 
Lata" to all the inhabitants of Sicily. ^^ ^ He introduced a number 
of persons into the senate, so that the majority of the whole body 
were said to owe their admission to him ;^s* and amongst the rest 
were several Transalpine Gauls ;^" upon which an ironical no- 
tice was handed about in Rome, ordering " that no one should 
pretend to, show the new senators the way to the senate-house." 
He raised several new families to the dignity of patricians, '^^ in 
order to supply the diminution of that order in the late war ; and 
he admitted all physicians, as well as the professors of all other 
liberal arts and sciences, resident at Rome, to the right of citizen- 
ship. All these acts had a beneficial tendency, as far as they con- 
tributed to place the inhabitants of different parts of the empire 
on a level with each other ; and prepared the way for their form- 
ing gradually one united nation, instead of regarding one another, 
as hitherto, in the light of masters and slaves, between whom 

159 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIII. epist. VII. those raised, on this occasion, to the rank 

160 Suetonius, 43. of patricians. This is not impossible, as 

161 Suetonius, 24. Caesar would naturally fix upon those fa- 

162 Appian, de Bello Civili, V. 3. milies which were noble, though not patri- 

163 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. XII. cians ; and, as Cicero was almost the only 
'64 Cicero, de Divinatione, II. 9. man surviving who had been consul before 

165 Suetonius, 76. 80. the civil wars, his family would readily 

166 Suetonius, 41. Tacitus, Annal. XL suggest itself as one of the first to receive 
25. Dion Cassius makes Q. Fufius Ca- this accession of dignity. Dion Cassius, 
lenus say, in his speech in defence of M. 306. 

Antonius, that Cicero's family was among 



342 REFORM OF THE CALENDAR. 

there existed an insuperable barrier. Another class of Caesar's 
measures regarded the important subject of population, and was 
an attempt to relieve the capital from some portion of that multi- 
tude of indigent citizens by which it was overburdened, and to 
substitute free inhabitants in the room of s6me of the slaves, who 
were now almost the sole cultivators of the soil in many parts of 
Italy. He is said to have settled no fewer than eighty thousand 
citizens, '^^ many of them freedmen, in different colonies, and to 
have restored on this occasion many towns which had been ruin- 
ed in former wars, particularly Carthage and Corinth. These 
two famous cities had been both destroyed in the same year, ex- 
actly a century before the period of their restoration ; they were 
now rebuilt together, and in a very short time rose to a high de- 
gree of wealth and importance. Then, to insure the existence of 
a free population in Italy, '^^ he forbade all citizens, between the 
ages of twenty and forty, from being abroad for more than three 
years together, except on military service ; nor were the sons of 
senators allowed to leave the country at all, except they travelled 
in the suite of a magistrate. He also insisted that all graziers, 
and persons who fed sheep or other animals on a large scale, 
should employ freedmen in the proportion of at least one-third 
out of the whole number of their shepherds or herdsmen. But 
the short duration of Caesar's power prevented these regulations 
from producing any sufficient effect ; and in the reign of Augus- 
tus'" it was still matter of complaint that many districts of Italy 
were only redeemed from desolation by the number of slaves be- 
longing to the great landed proprietors of Rome. 

The reform of the calendar, which was accomplished by Cse- 
sar, is too famous to be altogether passed over in si- Reform or the caien- 
lence. It has been observed several times in the '^"• 
course of this history, that the nominal time was about two 
months in advance of the real season of the year, so that what 
was called midsummer, was in reality the latter end of April. 
This confusion was mainly owing to the strange power allowed 
to the pontifices of intercalating or adding to the year what num- 
ber of days they pleased ; and this power was very capriciously 
exercised, as the interests of their friends might require a greater 
number to be added to lengthen the period of their being in office, 
or a less immber in order to shorten the term, when the annual 
magistracies were held by men of the opposite party. Cassar now 
employed the ablest astronomers of the age to place the computa- 
tion of time on a true fooling j'^" and two months were added to 
the current year, that on the ensuing first of January the real 
and nominal time might agree with one another. For the future, 

167 Suetonius, 42. Strabo, VIII. 436 ; '69 Livy, VI. 12. 
XVII. 9G8, edit. Xyland. '-o Plutarch, in Ceesare, 59. Suetonius, 

'68 Suetonius, ubi supra. 40. 



CESAR'S ARROGANCE GIVES OFFENCE. 343 

the year was to consist of three hundred and sixty-five days, and 
a single day was to be added every fourth year, according to our 
present practice ; so that this JuUan calendar has been followed 
ever since by the nations of Europe, with only the slight correction 
introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, and adopted in Great 
Britain in 1752, under the denomination of the New Style. 

Such were the principal public measures of Caesar's govern- 
ment ; but it was not by these that he provoked the Additional honours 

, I'll r II -i- I 1 bestowed on Caesar, 

conspiracy to which he leU a victim, so much as by after his victory in 
the arrogance of his personal behaviour, and his v'.c^ns 
open assumption of the state, as well as of the power, of an ab- 
sohite sovereign. After his last victory over the sons of Pompey 
in Spain, the liattery of the senate added yet more to the extrava- 
gant honours which they had already lavished on him ; and it 
appears that the homage thus profusely offered to him was more 
than he could bear, and that he fancied himself greater in propor- 
tion to the increased servility with which he was regarded. It 
was voted that he should be styled the " father of his country,'' 
and that the title " imperator" should be prefixed to his name ;^''' 
that his person should be declared sacred ; and that he should be 
appointed dictator for life. His statue was placed in the temple 
of duirinus or Romulus, ^^ and in the capitol, next to those of the 
seven traditional kings of Rome, and of L. Junius Brutus, the 
founder of the commonwealth. He was allowed to wear, on all 
public festivities, the dress used by victorious generals at their 
triumphs ;'^^ and at all times to have a crown of laurel on his 
head. The month in which he was born, and which had till 
then been called Q,uinti]is, was now named Julius, or July, in 
honour of him. Money was stamped with his image ; and a 
guard of senators and citizens of the equestrian order was voted 
for the security of his person. It was apparently soon after his 
return from Spain, that the whole body of the senate waited upon 
him to communicate to him the decrees which they had passed 
in his honour. He received them in state in front of the temple 
of Venus Genitrix which he had himself founded ;^''* but he 
never rose from his seat, either when they first approached him, 
or when they presented to him so many tokens of their submission 
and devotion. This was an affront which was never forgiven ; 
and it was particularly remarked, ""^ that during He gives offence by 
his own triumph, a short time before, when L. Pon- bJhaviour!""^"^'^'^ 
tius Aquila, one of the tribunes, allowed his triumphal chariot to 
pass by the benches appropriated to himself and his colleagues « 
without rising from his place, Csssar noticed it with great indig- 

wi'Livy, Epitome, GXVI. Diou Cas- "< Livy, Epitome, CXVI. Dion Cas- 

sius, XLIII. 235, 236. eius, XLIV. 244. 

172 Cicero, ad Atticum, XII. epist. XL V. "5 Suetonius, 78. 
'■'^ Suetonius. 

23 



344 THE DIADEM REJECTED BY CESAR. 

nation, openly saying, that Aquila had bettter at once take from 
him the administration of the commonwealth ; and for some days 
afterwards, whenever he promised any thing to any one who 
waited upon him, he used ironically to add, " But you must ob- 
tain the consent of Pontius Aquila !" On another occasion when, at 
the time of the Latin holydays,^"^ Cassar was riding into Rome in 
solemn procession, after having performed the usual sacrifices on 
the Alban hill, some voices amongst the multitude saluted him 
with the title of king, and a laurel crown, bound round with the 
white fillet or diadem, which was the well-known ornament of 
royalty, was placed upon one of his statues. Two of the tri- 
bunes, Epidius Marullus and C. Csesetius Flavius, ordered the 
diadem to be taken off frop* the laurel wreath, and the man who 
had put it on the statue to be taken into custody. Upon this Cae- 
sar upbraided them in strong language for endeavouring to excite 
the popular odium against him, as if he were really ambitious of 
the kingly title ; and by an exercise of what Paterculus calls his 
censorian power,^" he forbade them acting any more as tribunes, 
and expelled them from the senate, deploring at the same time, 
we are told, his own hard fortune in being thus obliged either to 
do violence to the clemency of his nature, or to suffer his dignity 
to be compromised. It is added, that Cassar so deeply resented 
the conduct of these tribunes, ^^« that he applied to the father of 
Caesetius to renounce his son for his seditious behaviour, promising 
him that he would amply provide for his two other sons, if he 
complied with his wishes. But the old man replied, "that Cassar 
should rather deprive him of all his children, than prevail on him 
to turn one of them out of his house as deserving to be given up 
by his father." Yet Caesar was probably well aware of the odium 
to which he would be exposed if he were suspected of aiming at 
the honours of royalty ; and it was to remove any such impres- 
sion from the public mind, that he took occasion to answer to the 
acclamations of the populace, on one occasion, when the}'- were 
saluting him M'ith the title of king, " that he was Cassar, and not 
a king." AVith the same view it is not unlikely that he had con- 
certed beforehand the famous scene which took place on the 
fifteenth February, at the festival of the Lupercalia, when M. 
Antonius, who then held the office of consul, approached Cassar, 
as he was sitting in state in the rostra above the forum, and pre- 
sented to him a royal diadem. A murmur ran through the mul- 
titude,'"^ but it was instantly changed into loud applause, when 
• Caesar rejected the piofleied ornament, and persisted in his refu- 
sal, although Antonius threw himself at his feet, imploring him, 
in the name of the Roman people, to accept it. To complete the 

"« Dion Cassius, XLIV. 245. Suetoni- '" Valerius Maximus, V. 7. 
ufl, 79. "• Cicero, Philippic. II. 34. 

'" 11. 68. 



CESAR'S IRREGULARITY IN BESTOWING OFFICES. 345 

purpose for which this scene was in all probability acted, Antonius 
caused a memorandum to be entered in the calendar for the year, 
*' That on the day of the Lupercalia, M. Antonius, the consul, had, 
by the command of the people, offered the dignity of king to C. 
Caesar, perpetual dictator, and that Cassar had refused to accept it." 
Yet the opinion was still entertained, that Caesar coveted this un- 
lawful and abhorred title ] and as mankind are the slaves of words, 
the imputation of aspiring to be king was eagerly laid to his 
charge by his enemies, as one which would most surely provoke 
against him the popular hatred. 

Another part of Caesar's conduct which gave great offence, 
was his assuming so openly not only the patronage cssar gives offence by 
of the ordinary offices of the state, but the power ofVstowing<Si"e"^^ 
of bestov/ing them in an unprecedented manner, in order to suit 
his own policy. At the beginning of the year 708, he had as- 
sumed the title of consul, together with his dictatorship, but he 
had no colleague, and the office was, in fact, merely nominal. 
But on his return to Rome in October, '^^ after he had finished the 
campaign in Spain, wishing for an opportunity of rewarding two 
of his adherents, he resigned his consulship, and appointed Q.. 
Fabius Maximus and C, Trebonius to succeed him for the re- 
maining three months of the year. It happened that Q,. Fabius 
died on the thirty-first of December, early in the morning ;i^' and 
that no occasion of exercising his patronage might be lost, Caesar 
caused the comitia to assemble about two o'clock in the afternoon, 
and to elect C. Caninius Rebilus for the few remaining hours of 
the year. The benefit of this short-lived honour appears to have 
been, that it conferred on the person who enjoyed it the rank of 
senator for life. Caesar, in like manner, increased the number of 
praetors to fourteen, '^'^ that of aediles to six, and that ofqueestorsto 
forty : he also added one new member to the college of augurs, 
one to that of the Pontifices, one to the Q^uindecemviri or keepers 
of the Sibylline books, and three to the Septemviri Bpulomim, 
who had the care of providing the feasts of the gods on all great 
solemnities. He made a point of rewarding every one who had 
served him ; and thus he did not hesitate to intrust the charge of 
the public mint to some of his own slaves,'^^ and even to appoint 
the son of one of his freedmen to command three of his legions 
which he left in Egypt, after his departure from that country in 
the autumn of the year 705. He allowed the same spirit to in- 
terfere in the administration of justice • and we are told that one 
of his veterans,'" who had received a grant of land, having been 
brought before him on a charge of violent and oppressive be- 

"» Dion Cassius, XLIII. 236. >"« Dion Cassius, XLIll. 237. 239, 240 : 

»8' Cicero, ad Familiares, VII. epist. XLII. 209. 
XXX. Plutarch, in Ceesare, 58, '*' Suetonius, in Caesare, 76. 

"* Seneca, de Beneficiis, V. 24. 



346 SKETCH OF C-ESAR'S MANNERS AND BEHAVIOUR. 

havionr towards his neighbours, was not only acquitted, but was 
presented by his judge with the very land on which he had un- 
justly encroached, as soon as he had reminded Csesar of some per- 
sonal services which he had rendered him during his first 
campaign in Spain. In fact, Caesar openly avowed, that if ruf- 
fians and cut-tliroats had supported him in his quarrel, he should 
think himself bound fully to requite them.'^^ Yet after all, in spite 
of his multiplication of offices, and the profusion with which he 
bestowed them, the claims of his partisans were more than he 
could satisfy ; and many of those who had served him through all 
his career of wickedness, were afterwards in the number of his as- 
sassins, because they did not think themselves sufficiently re- 
warded. ^^^ 

Cicero has left us a curious sketch of a visit which he receiv- 
sketch of his per- cd from CsBsar at his villa near Puteoli, in the 
behaviSS?"^" ^ month of December, 708.'^'' On the twentieth of 
December, Csesar arrived at the house of L. Philippus, the father- 
in-law of Octavius, attended by two thousand soldiers, who follow- 
ed him either for the security of his person, or as a mere guard 
of honour. He spent the morning of the following day at the 
house of Philippus, but was engaged the whole time in transact- 
ing business in private with L. Balbus. About one or two o'clock 
he took a walk on the sea-shore ; after which he went into a bath, 
and heard, with the utmost composure, a most virulent epigram 
of Catulus against him, in which he was taxed, in plain terms, 
with those abominable profligacies to which we have before al- 
luded. '^^ After this he took his place at Cicero's house, his 
immediate attendants forming part of the company, whilst the 
rest of his suite were entertained in separate apartments, accord- 
ing to their rank and respectability. " Caesar seemed to enjoy 
himself exceedingly," says Cicero, " and was in very good spirits. 
The conversation did not touch at all on politics, but we talked 
much on literary subjects." ^^s yg^^ however agreeable he might 
make himself in private society, he kept up a degree of state at 
Rome, which rendered access to his person difficult and humili- 
ating to those who had lived with him so long, in former times, on 
a footing of equality. Cicero complains of the vexations and 
mortifications which he was obliged to enddre in obtaining an 
audience from him ;'*" and he was told by C. Matins,^"' that once, 
when he had been detained for a long time, waiting till Ca3sar 
could receive him, Cgesar had himself observed, " that he must 

'^ Suetonius, 72. 'so Cicero, ad Familiares, VI. epist. 

"' Seneca, de IrA, III. 30. XIV. " Quum oninem adeundi et conve- 

«" Cicero, ad Atticum, XIII. epist. LII. niendi illius indignitatem et molesiiam 

"" Catullus, Cann. 29 and 57. pertulissem." 

•*' " LnovSatov oiiifv, ip Sermone ; (pi\6- "' Epistol. ad Atticum, XIV. epist. I. 

\oya, multa " II. 



CiESAR'S PLANS OP CONQUEST AND IMPROVEMENT. 347 

necessarily be very unpopular, when M, Cicero was thus kept in 
attendance, and could not see him whenever it suited him." " I 
know," he continued, " that no one would be more ready than 
himself to make allowances for me, but I am sure that he must 
detest me." There were, however, many incautious expressions 
of his own, which found their way into general circulation, and. 
excited a much stronger feeling against him. He was accustomed 
•to ridicule Sylla for resigning the dictatorship ]^^^ he used to say 
" that the commonwealth was now nothing ; it was a mere name, 
totally devoid of any reality ;" and in language yet more arro- 
gant, he added, " that he ought now to be spoken to with more 
deference, and that what he said should be considered as law." 
Yet he would not believe that he had any thing to fear from pop- 
ular resentment, insisting that his life was of the His confidence in wa 
utmost importance to his country; for that his am- own security. 
bition was now satisfied ; but that if he were to die, the republic 
would again be involved in civil wars more miserably than ever. 
Besides, his great courage rendered him insensible to danger, and 
impatient of precautions. In spite of the advice of his friends 
Hirtius and Pansa,"^ who advised him to guard by the sword 
that power which the sword had won for him, he used to say 
that he would rather die than make himself an object of terror to 
the people ; and he so far confided in his popularity, or in the as- 
cendency which he had acquired, that he dismissed the guard of 
Spanish soldiers which had been in the habit of attending him. 
Meantime, as if his government at home were his plans of conquest 

,,.,,,, . !/■ 11 PC- and of internal im- 

settled in lull security, he lormed plans 01 foreign provoment. 
conquests on the most extensive scale, which would employ him 
for some years at a distance from Rome. He talked of attacking 
the Parthians,^^^ and of subduing those wild tribes who dwelt on 
the banks of the Danube, and who occasionally made inroads 
upon the Roman territory in Thrace ; and in order to provide for 
the administration of affairs during his absence, he drew out a 
list of persons who were to hold the principal offices of state for 
the next two years, '^^ still retaining to himself the title and 
authority of dictator. Nor, whilst projecting schemes of conquest, 
was he neglectful of the internal improvement of his dominions. 
It was mentioned, that he was intending to frame a digest of all 
the Roman laws; ^^® to form public libraries, containing all the 
most valuable works of Greek, as well as of Roman literature ; 
to build in the capital a temple in honour of Mars, and a theatre, 
both in the highest style of magnificence ; to drain the Pontine 

192 Suetonius, 77. 86. ^^ Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. VI, 

193 Velleius Paterculus, II. 57. Sueto- Dion Cassius, XLIII. 239. 
nius, 86. ^^ Suetonius, 44. 

191 Suetonius, 44. Dion Cassius, XLIII. 
239. Plutarcb, 58. 



348 SKETCH OP THE PRINCIPAL CONSPIRATORS. 

marshes ; to make a grand line of communication across the 
Apennines from the Tiber to the Adriatic ; to carry a canal from 
Rome to Tarracina, in order to facilitate the arrival of goods in 
the capital from Sicily and the East ; to improve and enlarge the 
harbour of Ostia, and to dig through the isthmus of Corinth. 
Such are said to have been his designs : and preparations were 
already made for carrying the military part of them into execu- 
tion. His nephew, C Octavius,'^'' whom he had named as his 
master of the horse for one of the years of his intended absence, 
was sent over to Apollonia, in Epirus, there to remain and to pur- 
sue his literary studies, till Csesar should arrive in Greece to put 
himself at the head of his army ; and a force both of infantry 
and cavalry had been already transported across the Ionian 
gulf,"* and was quartered in Macedonia, waiting till the return 
of spring should enable them to commence their expedition against 
Parthia. 

It was about this time reported, that L. Cotta, one of the 
Report that it was in- Quindecemviri, or keepers of the Sibylline books, 

tended to declare him ■ j. j- ^ ^ j.ii_ ^.^liz-^i 

king. was intending to propose to the senate that Cassar 

should be declared king,^" and this step was to be urged on the 
authority of the Sibylline oracles, which declared that a king was 
necessary to the safety of Rome, in the event of a war with Par- 
thia. Whether the rumour was true or false, it is said to have 
hastened the resolution of those persons who had already formed 
A conspiracy formed ^ cousplracy agaiust CsBsar's life, and to have deter- 
against his life. miucd them to choose the fifteenth or ides of March, 

for the execution of their purpose, that being the day on which 
it was believed that L. Cotta would bring forward his proposal 
before the senate. It remains, therefore, that we give some ac- 
count of the origin of this famous conspiracy, and of the principal 
persons who were engaged in it. 

It is agreed on all sides that M. Junius Brutus andC. Cassius 
Sketch of the prin- Louglnus wcrc the chief promoters of the design, 
cipai conspirators. Tjjg formcr of thcso was the son of that M. Brutus 
M. Junius Brutus. ^y\^^Q j^^d taken part in the rebellion of M. Lepidus im- 
mediately after the death of Sylla, and who had in consequence 
been put to death at Mutina, by the orders of Pompey, in the 
year 676. The son, M. Brutus, was by his mother's side the ne- 
phew of M. Cato, and he accompanied his uncle to Cyprus in the 
year 695, when he was sent by P. Clodius to annex that island 
to the Roman empire. It appears, however, that he did not copy 

'»T Dion Cassius, XLIII. 239 ; XLV. worst authority, and that is saying not a 

271. Velleius Paterculus, II. 59. little, of all tl)e writers who hare left u» 

198 Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 110. accounts of these times. 

Appian says there were sixteen lejiions, "9 Suetonius, 79. Cicero, de Divina- 

and ten thousand cavalry ; a most ridicu- tione, II. 54. 
lous exaggeration. But Appian is the 



M. JUNIUS BRUTUS. 349 

the example of Cato's integrity ; for having become the creditor 
of the citizens of Salamis to a large amount,^"" he employed one 
M. Scaptius, a man of infamous character, to enforce the payment 
of his debt, together with an interest four times exceeding the 
rate allowed by law. And when Cicero governed the province 
of Cilicia, to which Cyprus seems to have been attached, Brutus 
wrote to him, and was supported by T. Atticus in his request, en- 
treating him to give Scaptius a commission as an officer of the 
Roman government, and to allow him to employ a military force 
to exact from the Salaminians the usurious interest which he 
illegally demanded. Cicero was too upright a magistrate to com- 
ply with such requests ; but they were so agreeable to the prac- 
tice of the times, that he continued to live on intimate terms with 
the man who could prefer them; and the literary tastes of Brutus 
were a recommendation which he could not resist ; so that he ap- 
pears soon to have forgotten the affair of Scaptius, and to have 
spoken and thought of Brutus with great regard. They both, in- 
deed,- were of the same party in politics ; and we are told that 
Brutus exerted himself very actively in Pompey's service in the 
campaign of 705 in Greece,'^" and being taken prisoner after the 
battle of Pharsalia, received his life from the conqueror. Before 
Csesar set out for Africa to carry on w;ar against Scipio and Juba, 
he conferred on Brutus'^"'^ the government of Cisalpine Gaul ;=2" 
and in that province Brutus accordingly remained, and was ac- 
tually holding an office under Caesar, while his uncle Cato was 
maintaining the contest in Africa, and committing suicide rather 
than fall alive into the hands of the enemy. His character, however, 
seems to have been greatly improved since his treatment of the 
Salaminians ; for he is said to have governed Cisalpine Gaul with 
great integrity and humanity,'^" insomuch that his statue was 
preserved in Milan when Augustus had obtained the sovereignty 
of the empire ; and the popularity which he obtained was reflected 

SO" Cicero, ad Atticum, V. epist. XXI. ; him much more than any honours could 
VI. epist. I. II. III. oblige." Life of Cicero, II. 210, Bvo. edit. 

201 Cicero, ad Atticum, XT. epist. IV. 1819. 

Dion Cassius, XLI. 184. Plutarch, in Ferguson's conjecture, so far as we have 

Bruto, 6. been able to find, is as destitute of any au- 

202 Cicero, ad Familiares, VI. epist. thority or probability as Middleton's in- 
VI. sertion of the words which we have print- 

203 " Where," says Ferguson, " he re- ed in italics, and which endeavour to 
mained, perhaps, rather under safe custody, represent Brutus as sacrificing his patriotic 
than high in the confidence of Caesar." independence to the entreaties of his 
Book V. 1. " He was induced," says mother. As to the rest of Middleton's 
Middleton, " by Caesar's generosity, and statement, we can only wonder that a 
his mother's prayers, to lay down his arms writer, in a Christian country, should think 
and return to Italy. Caesar endeavoured that he was panegyrizing his hero by im- 
Jo oblige him by all the honours which his puting to him such a disposition. 

power could bestow ; but the indignity of *"* Plutarch, in Bruto, 6. Comparat. 

receiving from a master what he ought to Dionis. cum Bruto, 5. 

have received from a free people, shocked * 



350 ^- CASSIUS LONGINUS. 

in some measure, we are told, upon the government of Caesar, 
from whom he had received his appointment. In the year 708 he 
returned to Rome, but afterwards set out to meet Caesar on his re- 
turn from Spain, and in an interview which he had with him at 
Nicaea,^''^ pleaded the cause of Deiotarus, king of Galatia, with 
such warmth and freedom, that Caesar was struck by it, and was 
reminded of what he used frequently to say of Brutns, that what 
his inclinations might be, made a very great diiference, but that 
whatever they were, they would be nothing lukewarm. It was 
about this time, also, that Brutus divorced his first wife, Appia, 
the daughter of Appius Claudius, and married the famous Porcia, 
his cousin, the daughter of Cato. Soon after he received another 
mark of Caesar's favour,^''^ in being appointed Prcetor Urhanus 
for the year 709 ; and he was holding that office when he resolved 
to become the assassin of the man whose government he had 
twice acknowledged, by consenting himself to act in a pubhc 
station under it. Sir Matthew Hale did well to accept the place 
of judge during the usurpation of Cromwell ; but what should we 
think of him if whilst filling that office, he had associated him- 
self with Colonel Titus, and other such wretches, in their plans 
to remove the protector by assassination ? 

C. Cassius Longinus was remarkable, even when a boy, for 
c. cassius Longinus. tlic prido and violence of his temper, if we may be- 
lieve the anecdotes reported of him by Plutarch^"'' and Valerius 
Maximus. He accompanied M. Crassus into Parthia as his quaestor, 
and distinguished himself, after the death of his general, by con- 
ducting the wreck of the Roman army back to Syria in safety. 
We have already spoken of him as being one of the tribunes at 
the beginning of the civil war ; and have mentioned his having 
the command of the Syrian squadron in Pompey's fleet, and the 
interruption which he met with, whilst engaged successfully 
against the enemy, from the news of the battle of Pharsalia. He 
afterwards resigned the contest, and submitted himself to Caesar 
in Asia Minor, when Caesar was returning from Egypt into Italy ; 
yet Cicero asserts,'^"^ that at that very time he had intended to as- 
sassinate the man whose clemency he was consenting to solicit, 
had not an accident prevented the accomplishment of his purpose. 
He was not only spared by Caesar, but was appointed by him one 
of his lieutenants f''^ a favour bestowed by magistrates on their 
friends, in order to invest them with a public character, and thus 
enable them to reside or to travel in the provinces with greater 
comfort and dignity. Even during the last campaign of Caesar 
in Spain, Cassius wrote to Cicero, saying that he was anxious 
i. 

205 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. I. 207 In Bruto, 9. Valerius Maximus, 

206 Plutarch, in Bruto, 7. Dion Cas- III. 1. 

8iu8, XLIV. 246. 2^ Philippic. II. 11. 

2* Cicero, ad f amiliares, VI. epist . VI . 



DECIMUS BRUTUS, C. TREBONIUS, CIMBER, GALBA, ETC. 351 

that Caesar should be victorious,'^''' for that he preferred an old 
and merciful master to a new and cruel one. He also, together 
with Brutus, was appointed one of the prsetors for the year 709,'^'' 
at a moment in which he was entirely discontented with Csesai-'s 
government, and is said to have been the person by whose in- 
trigues the first elements of the conspiracy were formed. 

Next to M. Brutus and C. Cassius, may be ranked Decimus 
Brutus and C. Trebonius. These had both served Decimus Brutus and 
Caesar in the civil war, and had commanded the ^- Trebonius. 
land and sea forces employed by him in the ■ siege of Massilia. 
Since that time Trebonius had been appointed proconsul of the 
Further Spain, and more recently, as we have seen, had enjoyed 
the title of consul during the last three months of the year 708. 
Decimus Brutus was chosen to succeed to the consulship in the year 
711,^^'^ and to the command of the province of Cisalpine Gaul imme- 
diately ; he was also named by Caesar in his will, amongst those 
persons who were to inherit his fortune, in case of the failure of 
his direct heirs. Another of the conspirators was 
L. Tillius Cimber, a man notorious for his drunken- 
ness and low violence,*^'^ who had been throughout the civil war 
a vehement partisan of Caesar, and had received from him lately 
the appointment to the province of Bithynia.^" Ser. Sulpicius 
Galba, the great grandfather of the emperor of that 
name, had also served under Caesar in Gaul, and 
probably, in the civil war ; but he was now offended, because 
Cassar had not given him the honour of the consulship.'^i^ L. 
MinuciusBasilus is also mentioned as having had a ^ ^^. . ^ ., 

T . r-i 1 --/^loic J ^- Minucius Basiius. 

command ni Caesar's army in Gaul,'^'® and as now 
being one of the conspirators against him ; while P. Servilius 
Casca, Cn. Domitius iEnobarbus, L. Pontius Aquila, and Q. Liga- 
rius, had been attached to the party of Pompey, although they 
had since submitted, and received the conqueror's pardon. Liga- 
rius, in particular, had been suffered to return to ^. . 

Italy in consequence of the earnest solicitations of 
his friends, amongst whom Cicero had appealed most strongly to 
Caesar's clemency,^"' and had gone so far as to represent Ligarius 
penitent for his fault, taking refuge in Caesar's mercy, and implor- 
ing pardon for his past conduct. Cn. Domitius^'^ cn. Domitius 
was the son of that L. Domitius, who had been the ^nobarbus. 

210 Ad Familiares, XV. episl. XIX. 21s Suetonius, in Galba, 3. 

211 Plutarch, in Bruto, 7. Cicero, ad 216 Csesar, de Bello Gallico, VI. 99. 
Familiares, XI. epist. II. III. He had afterwards fought in Spain under 

212 Velleius Paterculus, II. 58. 60. Sue- Cneius Pompeius in 708, and had then 
tonius, in Caesare, 83. submitted to Caesar, promising to be faith- 

213 Seneca, epist. LXXXIII. De Ira, ful to him hereafter, as he had been to 
III. 30. Pompeius. Auctor de Bell. Plispan. 19. 

214 Appian, de Bello Civili, III. 2. Cice- 217 Cicero, pro Lignrio, 10. 

ro, ad Familiares, XII. epist. XIII. 2i8 His name is mentioned amongst the 



352 MOTIVES OF THE CONSPIRATORS. 

unsuccessful candidate for the consulship, in opposition to Pom- 
pey and Crassus, in the year 698, who had been appointed as 
Caesar's successor in Gaul at the beginning of the civil war, who 
had been taken prisoner at Corfinium, and had afterwards been 
killed at Pharsalia. His son was also the nephew of Cato, whose 
sister L. Domitius had married ; so that this young man was 
likely to inherit a violent hatred against Csesar ; nor does it ap- 
pear that he had ever imitated the conduct of Brutus in accepting 
places of confidence and honour from the conqueror. 

The motives by which the conspirators were actuated, which, 
perhaps, they themselves could not have analyzed exactly, have 
been variously guessed by historians, according to their own pre- 
vailing opinions. Personal and party feelings may be confounded 
unconsciously with patriotism, even by the very man who is in- 
fluenced by them ; nor would it be reasonable to deny that many 
of Cassar's murderers had persuaded themselves that the interests 
of their country were promoted by their act. But if we could in- 
quire by what process they had acquired this persuasion, and with 
how much self-deception it was accompanied, we should, it is pro- 
bable, find that their motives were widely distinct from that purity, 
and singleness, and sincerity of purpose which are essential to 
real goodness. At any rate, it is clear that they who had served 
Caesar in the civil war, and had shared in the honours and ad- 
vantages of his victory, could with no shadow of justice become 
his murderers. Their patriotism ought to have been shown when 
Caesar first commenced his rebellion ; and had they then followed 
the example of Labienus, and forsaken their general when he 
began to be guilty of treason against his country, their motives 
might have been unquestioned, and their conduct would have 
been really just and honourable. Nor can even Brutus and Cas- 
sius be excused for accepting honours and offices from a govern- 
ment which they must have considered as unlawful and tyrannical. 
If Caesar's power were required by the circumstances of the com- 
monwealth, to destroy him was mischiev^ous ; if it were an evil 
which was only to be endured so long as it was inevitable, to 
countenance it by acting under it in a public station, was an 
abandonment of their duty to their country. But above all, the 
act of assassination is in itself so hateful, and involves in it so much 
dissimulation and treachery, that whatev^er allowance may be 
made for the perpretrators, when we consider the moral ignorance 
of the times in which they lived, their conduct must never be 

assassins of Caesar by Cioero, Philippic, in it, and did Cicero favour from policy 

II. 11 ; but Suetonius (in Nerone, 3,) says this false pretension? or were Domitius 

that he was accused, without foundation, himself and his posterity anxious in after- 

of having had a share in the deed. Was times to deny the fact, when he was re- 

he among tho.fe patrician youths who ceiving the favours of Augustus, or when 

joined the conspirators immediately after one of them, Nero, ascended the imperial 

the murder, wishing to appear concerned throne ? 



CESAR'S WARNINGS. 353 

spoken of without condemnation. And it is satisfactory to find 
that crimes of this nature have generally been as fruitless as they 
deserved to be. Harmodius and Aristogiton, by murdering Hip- 
parchus, only subjected Athens to a heavier tyranny ; and the 
assassination of Csesar furnished something of a pretence to his 
surviving followers, to involve the most eminent friends of the com- 
monwealth in one unsparing destruction. 

The whole number of the conspirators is said to have exceeded 
sixty ; and their intention was at first to have effected their pur- 
pose either in the street in which Caesar lived, or in the Campus 
Martins, when he was presiding at the elections of magistrates ; 
but when they heard that the senate was summoned to meet on 
the fifteenth of March, and it was rumoured that the proposal of 
bestowing on Csesar the title of king was then to be brought for- 
ward, they fixed upon that day, and on that meeting of the senate, 
as the time and place best suited for their attempt. 

On the evening of the fourteenth of March, Csesar was supping 
with M. licpidus, his master of the horse, who was Events which hap- 
now at the head of a body of troops without the cIT^ar's^muS. 
walls,2'9 and was preparing shortly to march with them into 
Transalpine Gaul, which had been assigned to him by Csesar as 
his province. It happened that Csesar was engaged in writing, 
when the rest of the party began to discuss the question, " What 
kind of death is most to be desired ?" The subject on which 
they were talking caught his attention, and he cried out, before 
any one else had expressed an opinion, " That the best death was 
a sudden one." A coincidence so remarkable was likely to be 
remembered afterwards by all who had been present ; but it is 
said, also, that he had been often warned by the augurs to beware 
of the Ides of March f^° and these predictions had, probably, 
wrought on the mind of his wife, Calpurnia, so that, on the night 
that preceded that dreaded day, her rest was broken by feverish 
dreams, and in the morning her impression of fear was so strong, 
that she earnestly besought her husband not to stir from home. 
He himself, we are told, felt himself a little unwell ;^*' and being 
thus more ready to be infected by superstitious fears, he was in- 
clined to comply with Calpurnia's wishes, and allowed some part 
of the morning to pass away, and the senate to be already assem- 
bled, without having as yet quitted his house. At such a moment 
the conspirators were alive to every suspicion ; and becoming 
uneasy at his delay, Decimus Brutus was sent to call on him,^''^ 
and to persuade him to attend the senate, by urging to him the 
oflence that he would naturally give, if he appeared to slight that 
body at the very moment when they were preparing to confer on 

219 Dion Cassius, ^LTII. 240 ; XLIV. 220 Plutarch, 63 Suetonius, 81. 
249. Plutarchj.ia Caesare, 63. Suetonius, 221 Suetonius, 8!. 
87. 222 Suetonius, 81. Plutarch, 64. 



354 CESAR'S ASSASSINATION. 

him the title of king, Decimus Brutus visited Cassar, and being 
entirely in his confidence, his arguments were listened to, and 
Caesar set out about eleven o'clock to go to the senate-house. 
He is nearly warned in When he was ou his Way thither, Artemidorus of 
time of his danger. Qnidus, a Greek sophist, who was admitted into the 
houses of some of the conspirators, and had there become acquainted 
with some facts that had excited his suspicions, approached him 
with a written statement of the information which he had obtained, 
and putting it into his hands, begged him to read it instantly, as 
it was of the last importance. Csesar, it is said, tried to look at 
it, but he was prevented by the crowd which pressed around him, 
and by the numerous writings of various sorts that were presented 
to him as he passed along. Still, however, he held it in his hand, 
and continued to keep it there when he entered the senate-house, 
M. Antonius, who was at this time Caesar's colleague in the 
Antonius is taken consulshlp, was ou the point of following him into 
tt'KnTmnce'of thc souatc, whcu C. Trcbouius called him aside,^''' 
the senate. ^^(j detained him without, by professing to desire 

some conversation with him. It is said that some of the conspir- 
ators had wished to include him in the fate of Caesar ; but Brutus 
had objected to it as a piece of unnecessary bloodshed ; and when 
it was remembered that he himself, not long ago, had proposed to 
Trebonius the very act which they were now about to perform, 
they consented that his life should not be endangered. Meantime, 
as Caesar entered the senate-house, all the senators rose to receive 
him. The conspirators had contrived to surround his person in 
the street, and they now formed his immediate train as he passed 
on to the curule chair, which had been prepared, as usual for his 
reception. That chair had been placed near the pedestal of a 
statue of Pompey the Great ; for the building in which the senate 
was assembled had been one of Pompey's public works f~* and 
it is said that Cassius,'^'^^ labouring under the strong feeling of the 
moment, turned himself to the image, and seemed to implore its 
assistance in the deed which was to be perpetrated. 

When Csesar had taken his seat, the conspirators gathered 
Assassination of cre- morc closcly arouud him, and L. Tillius Cimber 
709', A. c. 44 or 45. ' ■ approached him as if to ofier some petition, '^-^ which 
he continued to press with vehemence when Caesar seemed un- 
willing to grant it, and the other conspirators joined in supporting 
his request. At last, when Csesar appeared impatient of further 
importunity, Cinibcr took hold of his robe and pulled it down from 
his shoulders ; an action which was the signal agreed upon with 
his associates for commencing their attack. It is said that the 

223 Cicero, Philippic. II. 14. Velleius ^' Plutarch, in Caesare, 66. 
Paterculus, 11. 58 2» Suetonius, 82. Plularch, 66. 

224 " Curia Pompeia." Cicero, de Di- 

vinatione, II. 9. : 



CHARACTER OF C^SAR. 



355 



dagger of P. Casca took the lead in the work of blood, and that 
Ceesar, in the first instance of surprise, attempted to resist and 
to force his way through the circle which surrounded him. But 
when all the conspirators rushed upon him, and were so eager to 
have a share in his death, that they wounded one another in the 
confusion, he drew his robe closely round him, and having covered 
his face, fell without a struggle or a groan. He received three and 
twenty wounds, and it was observed that the blood, as it streamed 
from thern^, bathed the pedestal of Pompey's statue. No sooner 
was the murder finished, than M. Brutus,^" raising his gory dagger 
in his hand, turned round towards the assembled senators, and 
called on Cicero by name, congratulating him on the recovery of 
their country's liberty. But to preserve order at such a moment 
was hopeless : the senators fled in dismay ; Antonius made haste 
to escape to his house ; and a universal consternation was spread 
through the city ; till the conspirators, going in a body to the 
forum, addressed the people, and by assuring them that no vio- 
lence was intended to any one, but that their only object had been 
to assert the liberty of Rome, they succeeded in restoring com- 
parative tranquillity. Still, however, distrusting the state of the 
popular feeling, they withdrew into the capitol, which Decimus 
Brutus had secured with a band of gladiators whom he retained 
in his service ; and there, having been joined by several of the 
nobility, they passed the first night after the murder. Meanwhile, 
the body of Caesar was left for some hours, amidst the general 
confusion, on the spot where it fell f^^ till at last three of his slaves 
placed it on a litter, and carried it home, one of the arms hanging 
down on the outside of the litter, and presenting a ghastly spec- 
tacle. It was asserted by the surgeon, who examined the wounds, 
that out of so many, one alone was mortal ; that, namely, which 
he had received in the breast when he first attempted to break 
through the circle of his assassins. 

Caesar is said to have been in his stature tall,"' and of a fair 
complexion, but with black and lively eyes. In 
attention to his person and dress he almost exceeded '^*'™'^'"°^ ^'*='^'- 
the bounds of mere neatness ; and in gratifying his tastes for villas, 
furniture, pictures, statues, and in the choice of his slaves, he was 
accustomed to spare no expense or trouble. He was temperate in 
his eating and drinking, as became a soldier ; and his activity of 
body corresponded with the extraordinary vigour of his mind. It 
is a remarkable feature in his character, that he seems to have 
been alive to so many and such various enjoyments ; excessively 
addicted to gross sensualities, a lover of every kind of intellectual 
gratification, from the humblest of the fine arts to the highest and 

227 Cicero, Philippic. II. 12. 35. Dion ^^ Suetonius, 82. 
Gassius, XLIV. 249, 250. 229 Suetonius, 45, 46, 47. 



356 CHARACTER OF C^SAR. 

deepest parts of philosophy, enamoured at the same time of popu- 
lar honours, and, above all things, ambitious of political greatness. 
He is said to have composed two books.'^so u q^^ ^^le Method of 
speaking Latin with the greatest Propriety," while he was cross- 
ing the Alps on his return from his winter quarters in the north 
of Italy to rejoin his army in Gaul ; and on another occasion he 
wrote a poem entitled " The Journey," wd:iile he was travelling 
into Spain with the utmost rapidity to oppose the progress of the 
sons of Pompey in the year 7U8. His " Commentaries," which 
alone, of all his writings, have reached posterity, are admirably 
calculated to answer the purpose for which they were designed, 
the impressing his readers with the most favourable notions of 
himself Although the representations which they contain are a 
continued picture of his. abilities and successes, yet, because they 
are given in a quiet and unpretending style, they have gained 
credit for truth and impartiality j and critics, in their simplicity, 
have extolled the modesty of the author, because he speaks of 
himself in the third person. As a general, it is needless to pro- 
nounce his eulogy ; we may observe, however, that the quality 
which most contributed to his success on several occasions was 
his great activity ; and although this may seem a virtue no way 
peculiar to men of superior minds, yet in the practical business of 
life there is none which produces more important results. Nor is 
it, in fact, an ordinary quality when exhibited in persons invested 
with extensive power ; for then it implies quickness and decision 
in difficulties, than which nothing confers on one man a more com- 
manding superiority over others. In his political career Cassar was 
at once patient and daring ; and the uniform success of all his 
schemes through so many years, must prove his judgment in the 
choice of means to accomplish his purposes. One weakness he 
seems to have possessed, and that was vanity ; which he indulged 
unseasoi}ably and fatally in receiving so greedily the honours 
which were at last heaped upon him, and in disgusting the public 
feeling by expressing, with so little reserve, his sense of his own 
superiority. The submissions which he met with were indeed 
enough to excite his arrogance ; for not the most servile flattery of 
our own clergy and lawyers to the Tudor and Stuart princes can 
equal the meanness and extravagance of the language addressed to 
Caesar by the republican Romans. In fact, we see from different 
parts ot Cicero's works, and particularly from many of the letters 
inserted in the collection of his correspondence, that the expressions 
used by inferiors towards their superiors in rank, seem to imply 
very little independence of feeling in the bulk of the Roman peo- 
ple : and the excessive compliments which Cicero delighted to 
receive, and which he paid with equal liberality, betray a littleness 

230 Cicero, de claris Oratoribue, 72. Suetonius, 56. 



CHARACTER OF CiESAR. 357 

and indelicacy of mind which we should not have expected to 
meet with in men of high birth and station, the citizens of a free 
commonwealth. 

If from the intellectual we turn to the moral character of Csesar, 
the whole range of history can hardly furnish a picture of greater 
deformity. Never did any man occasion so large an amount of 
human misery, with so little provocation. In his campaigns in 
Gaul, he is said to have destroyed 1,000,000 of men in battle,^^' 
and to have made prisoners 1,000,000 more, many of whom were 
destined to perish as gladiators, and all were torn from their coun- 
try and reduced to slavery. The slaughter which he occasioned 
in the civil wars cannot be computed; nor can we estimate the 
degree of suffering caused in every part of the empire by his spoli- 
ations and confiscations, and by the various acts of extortion and 
oppression which he tolerated in his followers. When we con- 
sider that the sole object of his conquests in Gaul was to enrich 
himself and to discipline his army, that he might be enabled the 
better to attack his country ; and that the sole provocation on 
which he commenced the civil war, was the resolution of the 
senate to recall him from a command which he had already en- 
joyed for nine years, after having obtained it in the beginning by 
tumult and violence ; we may judge what credit ought to be given 
him for his clemency in not opening lists of proscription after his 
sword had already cut off his principal adversaries, and had level- 
led their party with the dust. Yet after all his crimes, the cir- 
cumstances of his death render him almost an object of compas- 
sion ; and though it cannot be said of his assassins, that 

" Their greater crime made his like specks appear. 
From which the sun in glory is not clear," 

yet we naturally sympathize with the victim, when the murderers, 
by having abetted or countenanced his offences, had deprived 
themselves of all just title to punish them, and when his fall was 
only accomplished by the treachery of assassination. 

231 Plutarch, in Csssare. 15. Pliny has the persons whom Caesar had killed in 

estimated the sum with greater minute- war to amount altogether to 1,192,000, 

ness, probably from the returns exhibited exclusive of those who had perished in the 

at Caesar's triumphs of the number of en- civil war, and of whom no account wa8 

emies whom he had destroyed. He makes taken. Pliny, Hist. Nat. VH. 25. 



CHAPTER X. 

CAIUS OCTAVIUS C^SAR AUGUSTUS.— A VIEW OF THE HISTORY 
OP ROME.— FROM U.C. 709 TO U.C. 722, A.C. 45 TO A.C. 32. 

We have already spoken slightly of the family of Augustus 
u. c. 709 to 722, A. c. Csesar, and have mentioned his relationship to C. 
parerftege and' early Juhus CsBsar, as being the grandson of his sister 
life of Augustus. Julia. Julia married M. Attius Balbus, a native of 
Aricia,^ who rose to the rank of prsetor at Rome ; and Attia, their 
daughter, married C. Octavius, a man of respectable family, who 
also obtained the same dignity, and died when he was on the 
point of offering himself as a candidate for the consulship. He 
left behind him one son, C. Octavius, who was born at Rome on 
the twenty-third of September, u.c. 690. in the consulship of M. Ci- 
cero and C. Antonius. The young Octavius lost his father wtien 
he was only four years old, and his mother soon after married L. 
Philippus, under whose care he was brought up, till his great 
uncle, Julius Ceesar, having no children, began to regard him as 
his heir,^ and when he was between sixteen and seventeen years 
of age, bestowed on him some military rewards at the celebration 
of his triumph for his victories in Africa.^ In the following year he 
accompanied his uncle into Spain, where he is said to have given 
signs of talents and of activity ; and in the winter of that same 
year he was sent, as we have seen, to ApoUonia in Epirus, there 
to employ himself in completing his education till Cassar should 
be ready to take him with him on his expedition against the Par- 
thians. He was accordingly living quietly at Apollonia when the 
news of his uncle's death called him forward, when hardly more 
than eighteen years of age, to act a principal part in the conten- 
tions of the times. 

On the morning of the sixteenth of March, Brutus and Cassius, 
state of affiairs in With their associatcs, were still in the capitol, and 
de"aTh.'^ ^^ '"^"^ Cicero and several other persons attached to the 
aristocratical party* had joined them there. Antonius finding him- 
self exposed to no danger, appeared again in public, as consul ; 

I Suetonius, in Augusto, 4. 8 Suetonius, 8. 

s Velleius Paterculus, II. 59. * Cicero, Philippic. II. 35. 



DISPOSITION OF THE VETERANS. 359 

and Dolabella/ who had been appointed by Caesar to succeed him 
in the consulship, as soon as he should commence his expedition 
against the Parthians, now at once assumed the ensigns of that 
dignity ; although with strange inconsistency he went up into 
the capitol to visit the conspirators, and if Appian may be be- 
lieved,^ strongly inveighed against the late dictator in a speech 
addressed to the multitude in the forum. M. Lepidus, who, as 
we have seen, was at this time invested with a military command, 
having been lately appointed to the government of the Nearer 
Spain, had some intention?, it is said, of availing himself of his 
actual power to establish himself in the place of Csesar ;'' but An- 
tonius, who had no wish to see his own views thus anticipated, 
easily prevailed upon him to lay aside such designs for the pre- 
sent ; representing to him, we may suppose, the danger of such 
an attempt, and encouraging him with the prospect of obtaining 
hereafter all that he desired, if he would consent to temporize at 
the moment. But the real obstacle to the restoration of the com- 
monwealth, consisted in the numbers and dispositions of Csesar's 
ve'teran soldiers, many of whom were waiting in Disposition of the 
Rome to receive their promised allotments of land ; veterans. 
and others had come up from their new settlements to compli- 
ment their old general, by attending in his train when he should 
march out of the city to commence his eastern expedition.^ These 
then naturally resented the death of their benefactor, and feared 
at the same time lest they should be deprived of their grants of 
land if he were declared a tyrant, and his acts should be reversed. 
They were therefore a great encouragement to Antonius and Lepi- 
dus, and gave such alarm to the conspirators, that they remained 
in the capitol, still trusting to the gladiators of Decimus Brutus 
for protection, and not venturing to expose their persons in the 
streets or in the forum. Nor were the veterans the only set of men 
who were interested in upholding the legality of Caesar's govern- 
ment. He had nominated, as we have seen, the principal magis- 
trates of the commonwealth for the next two years, under pre- 
tence of preventing any disorders during his absence in Asia ; 
and the individuals who, by virtue of these appointments, were 
either in the actual enjoyment or in the expectation of offices 
either honourable or lucrative, were little disposed to submit their 
pretensions to the chance of being confirmed or rejected by the 
free votes of the Roman people. Besides, the late civil war had 
so extended over every part of the empire, and every province 
contained so many persons who had risen to afiiuence or distinc- 
tion in consequence of the ofiices or of the grants of forfeited 
estates conferred on them by Csesar, that to repel all his measures, 

5 Dion Cassius, XEIV. 250. . ^ Dion Cassius, XLIV. 257. 

6 De Belle Civili, II. 122. s Appian, de Bello Civili, II. 119. 

24 



360 



MEETING OF THE SENATE. 



and to brand his government as an usurpation, would have at 
once unsettled the whole existing order of society. The foreign- 
ers who had been admitted to the rights of Roman citizens, and 
the many individuals who, in the course of the late commotions, 
had risen from humble stations to greatness, would have ill 
brooked the return of that exchisive and insulting system which 
was upheld by the friends of the old aristocracy. 

Under these circumstances, the act of the assassins of Cassar 
was lilvely to have no other effect than to expose their country to 
a fresh series of miseries, from which it would have no better pros- 
pect of relief, than a return at last to that very military despot- 
ism which they had so rashly attempted to overthrow. Cicero 
indeed had advised the only measure which could have given the 
conspirators any chance of maintaining their ground in Rome ]^ 
for he had urged Brutus and Cassius to summon the senate, by 
their authority as praetors, to assemble in the capitol immediately 
after Caesar's death, before Antonius had recovered from his panic, 
or the veterans had had time to calculate their own strength or to 
look out for a new leader. But this counsel was not followed ; 
and it was left for Antonius, in his character of consul, to call the 
senate together at the temple of the Earth on the seventeenth of 
March, ^^ when the doors of the assembly were beset by Caesar's 
veterans in arms, and when they who hoped that they had re- 
stored the old constitution of the commonwealth dared not even 
to leave the shelter of the capitol. Nor was it a slight circum- 
stance, that Calpurnia, Cassar's widow, had put into Antonius's 
hands the money and all the papers of her late husband;" a trust 
from which he intended to derive the most important benefits. 

In the meeting of the senate on the seventeenth of March, the 
Meeting of the senate rcviving Strength of Cassar's party was already dis- 
on the 17th of March, tiuctly marked. Instead of declaring him a tyrant, 
it was ordered that the late dictator should be honoured with the 
usual funeral rites paid to distinguished persons,"^ and that Anto- 
nius should deliver to the multitude an oration in his praise. All 
his acts were confirmed ; his appointments of public officers for 
the next two years were pronounced valid ; and all the grants of 
lands made to the veterans Avere to be preserved inviolable. In 
return for these concessions, the partisans of Caesar acceded to 
Cicero's proposal,^^ that the whole transaction of the ides of March 
should be consigned to oblivion, and that all hostile designs should 
be relinquished on all sides, Antonius in particular expressed 
himself warmly in favour of a general and lasting peace ; and 
this being the prevailing feeling of the assembly, the act of ob- 

9 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. X. ^2 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. VI. 

10 Cicero, ad Atticum.XIV. epist. XIV.; IX. X. Philippic, I. 1. 7. 

and Philippic, II. 35. i3 Cicero, Philippic. I. I. 13 ; 11.36. 

11 Appian, II. 125. 



CESAR'S FUNERAL. 361 

livion was passed : Antonius sent his son to the ^ gg^g^^j ^^j ^^ 
capitol as a hostage for his sincerity. The princi- amnesty passes. 
pal conspirators then descended from it ; and we are told that 
JBrutus that same evening supped with Lepidus, and Cassius with 
Antonius.^* 

After this apparent termination of all dissensions, the conduct 
of Antonius was exceedingly artful. He frequently invited the 
most distinguished members of the senate to his house, and con- 
sulted them as to the measures which it would be expedient to 
pursue. On the other hand, by coming forward to deliver Cassar's 
funeral oration, he gave the veterans reason to understand that 
he was really attached to their late commander, and would not 
fail, when an opportunity should offer, to act upon his real senti- 
ments. In the meantime Caesar's will was opened 

1 J J., 1 ^1 J. r^ r\ ± • CsBsar's will opened. 

and read; and it appeared that O. Uctavms was 
named the heir to the greatest part of the property, ^^ and that he 
was adopted into the name and family of Cassar. Several of the 
conspirators had been appointed guardians to Caesar's son, if ever 
he should have one ; and Decimus Brutus, as has been said be- 
fore, was mentioned amongst those who were to inherit his for- 
tune, in case of the failure of his regular heirs. To the Roman 
people Caesar bequeathed his gardens on the right bank of the 
Tiber ; and to each citizen a sum of money amounting to about 
21. Ss. His funeral was prepared in a style of great 
magnificence ;^® the pile on which the body was to *^^'^ ™" 

be consumed had been raised in the Campus Martins ; and a 
small model of the temple of Venus Genitrix, which he had built 
and dedicated, was placed in front of the rostra in order to receive 
the bier, whilst the funeral oration was delivered. The bier was 
made of ivory, and covered with scarlet and gold, and at the head 
of it was displayed on a pole the very dress in which he had been 
assassinated. In the dramatic entertainments which were ex- 
hibited as a part of the solemnity, passages were selected from 
the plays of Pacuvius and Attius, which the audience might 
readily apply to the circumstances of Caesar's fate ; particularly 
one line from, Pacuvius, 

" Was I so merciful, 
But to provide assassins for myself?" 

When then Antonius came forward in the rostra to speak the fu- 
neral oration, he ordered the crier to read aloud to the multitude 
all the decrees of the senate, by which Caesar had been invested 
with so many and such extraordinary honours, and the oath 
which all the senators had taken to defend his person ; after 

' 1* Dion Cassius, XLIV. 257. Plutarch, is Suetonius, in Caesare, 83. 
in Bruto, 19. ^^ Suetonius, in CaBsare, 84. 



362 RIOTS OF THE POPULACE. 

which he added only a few words of his own.'' But his purpose 
was sufficiently answered, and enough had been done to excite 
the feelings of the multitude, disposed as they were of themselves 
to remember Csesar's brilliant achievements with admiration, and 
his liberalities with gratitude and regret. Instead of carrying the 
body to the Campus Martius, some proposed to burn it in the tem- 
ple of Jupiter in the capitol, and others in the senate-house of 
Pompey, which had been the scene of his murder. But on a sud- 
den, two of the veteran soldiers who attended the funeral, stepped 
forward armed with their swords, and each holding two javelins 
XT ., J K .^ n in his hand, and set fire to the bier with lighted 

His body burned in * ' . t ■ i 

the forum. torchos m the placc where it was standnig m the 

front of the rostra. The flames were fed by the zeal of the sur- 
rounding crowd with a quantity of dry brush-wood, and with the 
benches and seats which were usually left in the forum : those 
who had brought offerings of various kinds to present them at 
the funeral pile, now threw them in to increase the conflagration ; 
the musicians and actors in the funeral games stripped off" their 
dresses, and cast them also into the fire ; several matrons added 
their own ornaments, and those of their children, while the vete- 
ran soldiers crowned the whole with the offering of their own 
arms. Groups of foreigners of various nations were seen express- 
ing their grief according to the fashion of their several countries ; 
and amongst these the Jews were particularly remarkable ; their 
hatred to Pompey for his violation of the sanctity of their temple 
having, perhaps, disposed them to support the cause of his adver- 
Kiots of the populace sary. Whcu the populace were satiated with feed- 
on that occasion, jj-jg i\^Q fire, they dispersed m all dn-ections, bent 
upon violence and bloodshed. They attacked the houses of those 
persons Avho were known to be adverse to Caesar ;'s and especial- 
ly those of the chief conspirators, Brutus and Cassius, whence 
they were driven off" by force of arms, as in the old disorders and 
contests between Clodius and Milo. In the midst of their fury, 
they fell in with a man by name Helvius Ginna ; and mistaking 
him for Cornelius Cinna, who had given great offence by a speech 
delivered the day before, full of invective against Caesar, they 
instantly nun-dered him, and carried his head about with them 
on the head of a pike. This display of the temper of the popu- 
lace served the purposes of Antonius by intimidating the conspir- 
ators ; but as he designed to establish his power on a surer basis 
than the support of a riotous rabble, he appeared to give no coun- 
tenance to their excesses. A mixed multitude, consisting of slaves, 

IT Perpauca a se verba addidit. — Sue- speech which he ascribes to Cicero, and 

tonius, in Caesare, 84. Dion Cassius makes which is about as genuine as the pretended 

him deliver a speech on this occasion funeral oration of Antonius. 
which occupies nearly nine folio pages. — '^ Cicero, Philippic. II. 36. Suetonius, 

He had just before filled six pages with a in Csesare, 85. 



STORY OF C. AMATIUS. 353 

and foreigners, and citizens of the lowest class, erected a marble 
pillar, ^^ twenty feet high, in the forum, with an inscription declar- 
ing it to be dedicated to Csesar, under the title of " Father of his 
country." Close by this pillar there was an altar raised, on which 
sacrifices continued for some time to be offered to Csesar as a god ; 
and parties at variance with one another would come to this spot, 
and decide their quarrels by an oath in Caesar's name. The 
groups that used to assemble round this column menaced the cap- 
ital daily with scenes of outrage similar to those which had been 
exhibited at Caesar's funeral ; till P. Dolabella proceeded to dis- 
perse them, and with the usual summary severity p^i^beiia disperses 
of a Roman magistrate, crucified a number of the ^'^^ "°'"''- 
slaves, and threw down from the Tarpeian rock those free citi- 
zens who were most forward in exciting these disturbances.^" It 
• is said that when Dolabella returned to his house after these exe- 
cutions, he was followed by a crowd of all ranks of persons, testi- 
fying their admiration of his conduct ; that he received similar 
applauses shortly afterwards in the theatre ; and that Cicero was 
warmly complimented by his friends on this earnest of patriotic 
intentions which his son-in-law had afforded. 

Antonius had also an opportunity about the same time of 
gaining the good opinion of the higher classes of 

°.. ° ■, °^. ■'■ . ., ° rni Story of C. Amatius, 

Citizens by acting m a similar manner. i here the pretended grand- 

^1 • • r .1 r r-i son of Marius. 

was a man 01 very low origin, 01 the name 01 C. 
Amatius, who some months before, in the lifetime of Cassar, 
had claimed to be the grandson of the famous Marius, and had 
applied to Cicero as a relation and townsman of Marius,^^ to sup- 
port him in making good his pretensions. Cicero was not dis- 
posed to commit himself by maintaining such a cause ; but the 
name of Marius was popular amongst a large proportion of the 
common people ; and we are told that almost all the companies 
of the different trades in Rome,^^ together with some of the newly 
founded colonies of the veterans, and even some considerable free 
towns of Italy, believed the story of Amatius, and chose him to be 
their patron. He was followed also by a considerable multitude 
when he appeared in the streets ; till Csesar, impatient of such a 
rival in popularity, issued a decree to banish him from Italy. But 
after the ides of March, he returned again to Rome, and professed, 
as the descendant of Marius, to feel particular regret for the mur- 
der of his relation, Ceesar ; insomuch, that he continually insti- 
gated the populace to take vengeance on the conspirators, and 
under this pretence had formed a design, as we are told,^^ to mas- 

w Suetonius, 85. Cicero, Philippic. I 2. 21 Cicero, ad Atticum, XII. epist. XLIX. 

20 Cicero, Philippic. I, 2. 13 , ad Atti- Livy, Epitome, CXVI. 

cum, XIV. epist. XVI.; ad Familiares, 22 Valerius Maximus, IX. 15. 

IX. epist. XIV. 23 Cicero, Philippic. I. 2. Valerius Max- 



364 THE CONSPIRATORS RETIRE FROM ROME. 

sacre the principal senators of the aristocratical party, and to rule 
in Rome as L. Saturninus and P. Sulpieius had done in former 
times. But the days were past in which ambition could hope to 
rise by the mere support of the turbulent rabble of the capital. 
Antonius, glad, perhaps, to please and to blind his opponents so 
cheaply, employed a military force against Amatius, and having 
arrested him, ordered him to be put to death in prison, in pur- 
suance of a decree of the senate, and caused his body to be 
dragged by a hook through the streets, and to be thrown into the 
Tiber. This execution took place about the middle of April ;'* 
and up to this period, Antonius had appeared desirous in several 
instances to maintain the old constitution of the commonwealth. 
To lessen the dissatisfaction that might be felt by many at the 
confirmation of all the -acts of Caesar, ^^ he assured the senate that 
Csesar's papers contained no grants of privileges or peculiar exemp- 
tions of any sort, and that they directed the recall of only one exile, 
Sex. Clodius ; he agreed, moreover, to the motion of Ser. Sulpieius, 
that none of Caesar's decrees or grants should be published, which 
had not already been announced by public advertisement before 
The office of dictator the ides of March. Above all, he proposed that the 

is abolished by Anto- re ^j-x, i iii r iti i 

nius. oince 01 dictator should be for ever abolished ; a 

proposal which was most joyfully acceded to by the senate, and 
for which they bestowed on him their thanks in the warmest 
terms. His treatment of C. Amatius, combining with his be- 
haviour in all these instances, is said to have given satisfaction 
even to Brutus himself ;^^ and seemed to afford so fair a prospect 
of future tranquillity, that Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, expresses 
his belief that Brutus might now go in safety through the forum, 
with a cover of gold upon his head.^" 

But these hopes were chequered by fears even from the be- 
The conspirators ginning, aiid it was not long before they were de- 
retire from Rome. stroycd altogether. The tumults in the city, and 
the threatening language held by Csesar's veterans, who were now 
assembled at Rome in great numbers, rendered the situation of 
the conspirators so unsafe, or at least so uncomfortable, that they 
judged it expedient to withdraw for the present out of the reach 
of danger. At first they had remained in their own houses at 
Rome, and had only avoided appearing in pubhc ;-* but when the 
disorders continued, they thought it best to remove to a greater 
distance ; and, accordingly, Brutus, apparently accompanied by 



imus, ubi supra. Appian, de Bello Civili, 2S Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, XIV. 
III. 2, .3. epist. VIII. 

2* Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, XIV. 27 Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, XIV. 
epist. VII. VIII. epist. XVI. 

25 Conf. Ciceron. Philippic. I. 1. 28 Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, XIV. 

epist. V. 



ANTONIUS FORGES GRANTS IN CESAR'S NAME. 265 

Cassias, retired to his own villa at Lanuvium f^ Trebonius set 
out iti the most private manner to go to his province of Asia ; and 
Decimus Brutus hastened to Cisalpine Gaul,^" to secure the com-^ 
mand of that province, which Caesar, as has been already noticed, 
had conferred on him before his death. This appears to have 
been a sudden resolution ; for there is extant a letter from Deci- 
mus Brutus, to M. Brutus and Cassius,^^ dated in the month of 
April, in which he speaks in a very desponding manner of the 
state of his party, and says that they have no other resource but 
to withdraw into a voluntary exile ; that they can do nothing at 
present, as they have no military force to support them ; nor was 
there any quarter to which they could look for aid, except to the 
camp of Sex. Pompeius, in Spain, and Q,. Csecilius Bassus, in 
Syria. Yet on the twenty-sixth of April, Cicero Decimus Bmtus 
had received intelligence from Atticus, that Decimus of c7saipine caui. 
Brutus had already joined his legions in Cisalpine Gaul ; and in 
that province he remained during the whole summer, endeavour- 
ing to strengthen himself to the utmost against any attempts of 
his adversaries. In order to acquire some reputation for himself, 
and to obtain the means of attaching his soldiers to him by his 
liberality, he employed his time in attacking some of the Gaulish 
tribes who inhabited the Alps f^ and having taken many of their 
strongholds, and wasted their country, he received from his army 
the title of imperator, and was enabled, as he hoped, to gratify it 
with a large share of plunder. 

Soon after the departure of the conspirators from Rome, Anto- 
nius proceeded to show the use which he intended to make of the 
confirmation of Caesar's acts by the senate. In spite of the re- 
striction to which he had himself assented, that no new grant 
should be published after the ides of March, Anto- Antonius forges grants 
nius is accused of having commenced a system of iei^slfemSfso^vn 
audacious forgeries, ^^ affixing notices in the forum '"^"^^'■ 
of all sorts of donations and immunities, both to states and pri- 
vate individuals, which he pretended to have discovered amongst 
CcBsar's papers, but which he is charged with having invented at 
his own discretion, and sold as an unfailing source of revenue to 
himself. Besides all this, he is taxed with having appropriated an 
immense treasure which Csesar had acquired by his confiscations 
and plunderings, and had deposited in the temple of Ops. With 
this money, Antonius is said to have discharged the debts of his 
colleague, Dolabella, and to have thus secured him to his own 
interests ; at the same time he found his power of selling forged 

29 Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, epist. 32 Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist IV. 

YII. X. 33 Velleius Paterculus, II. 60. Cicero, 

3" Conf. Ciceron. ad Atticum, epist. Philippic. II. 37, 38 ; Philippic. V. 4 ; ad 

,XIII. Atticum, XIV. epist. XII. XVIII . 

31 Cicero, ad Familiares, XL epist. I. 



366 OCTAVIUS RETURNS TO ITALY FROM EPIRUS. 

grants so profitable to himself, that, if we may believe Cicero, he 
paid all his own debts, to the amount of above 300,000/., in the 
short interval that elapsed between the ides of March and the first 
of April. 

In order to obviate effectually all opposition to his views, he 
He courts cssar's made a progrcss through several parts of Italy in 
veteran soldiers. ^}^Q uiouths of April and May, ^^ in which he took 
occasion to address himself to Cassar's veterans in their different 
settlements, and to conjure them to bind themselves by oath, to 
maintain all Caesar's acts, and to procure the appointment of two 
commissioners to inspect his papers every' month, in order to de- 
cide whether aJl their provisions were duly carried into effect. He 
also spread a report, that the veterans would be most nearly con- 
cerned in the discussion which was to take place in the senate on 
the first of June ]^^ and this rumour induced them, as he intended, 
to assemble in crowds at Rome, so that it became unsafe for the 
conspirators or their friends to be present at the meeting. Yet, 
during all this time, Antonius preserved an appearance of respect 
and civility towards Brutus and Cassius. He had prevailed on 
them to dismiss their friends, who had assembled from several of 
the municipal towns of Italy to protect them, assuring them that 
it would be wise to avoid every appearance of suspicion or hos- 
tility ; and he had also proposed to the senate, that Brutus should 
be dispensed from the observation of the law,^^ which forbade a 
praetor to be more than ten days absent from Rome. He wrote, 
also, to Cicero in very friendly language, requesting him to con- 
sent to the restoration of Sex. Clodius from exile ; and telling 
him, that although he might be bound in duty to restore him, as 
his recall had been one of Ceesar's acts, yet he would not press 
the point, unless Cicero was willing to agree to it. Cicero, in re- 
turn, assured Antonius of his perfect readiness to comply with his 
request ; and added, that both on public and private grounds 
there was no man for whom he entertained a higher regard." 
Such was his language towards the end of the month of April ; in 
the September- following he delivered his first philippic. 

In the mean time, the tidings of Caesar's murder had reached 
c.octavius returns to liis uephcw, C. Octavius, at Apollonia, whither, 
Italy from Epirus. j^g ^yQ \^Q^yQ beforc mentioned, he had been sent to 
complete his education, and to be in readiness also to attend his 
uncle when he should set out on his expedition into Parthia. As 
the probable heir of Caesar's greatness, he already received many 
attentions from the officers of the army which was then quartered 

31 Cicero. Philippic II. 39 ; ad Atti- B. Nam quum te semper amavi, primum 

cum, XIV. epist. XXI. tuo studio, post etiam beneficio provoca- 

35 Cicero, ad Familiarcs, XI. epist. II. tus ; tuni his temporibus Respubiica te 

3s Cicero, Philippic. II. 13. mihi ita commendavit, utcarioremhabeam 

37 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. XIII. ncminem. 



HE IS COOLLY RECEIVED BY ANTONIUS. 357 

in Macedonia ; and when Caesar's death was known, M. Vipsa- 
nius Agrippa, and Gt. Sabidienus Rufus, who are here first spoken 
of as his friends,^^ advised him to embrace the offers which many 
of the soldiers and centurions made him, of assisting him to re- 
venge his uncle's murder. But as he was not yet aware of the 
strength of that party which he would find opposed to him, he 
judged it expedient in the first instance to return to Italy in a pri- 
vate manner. On his arrival at Brundusium he learned the parti- 
culars of Csesar's death, and was informed also of the contents of 
his will,^^ by which himself was declared his heir, and his adopt- 
ed son. He did not hesitate instantly to accept this adoption, 
and to assume the name of Csesar ; and, it is said, numerous 
parties of his uncle's veterans, who had obtained settlements in 
the districts of Italy, through which he passed, came from their 
homes to meet hii.n, and to assure him of their support." He ar- 
rived at Neapolis on the eighteenth of April,^' and had an inter- 
view there with L. Balbus, who had been so long the confidential 
friend of Caesar, and who reported to Cicero, on the very same 
day, that Octavius was resolved to accept the inheritance be- 
queathed to him. From Neapolis he proceeded to see his mother, 
and his father-in-law, L. Phiiippus, at their villa near Puteoli. It 
happened that Cicero was at this time at his own villa, which 
was almost close to that of Phiiippus ;^2 and not only L, Balbus, 
but A. Hirtius and C. Pansa were also staying in the same neigh- 
bourhood. Octavius, doubtless, consulted these old adherents of 
his uncle with some anxiety, as to the prospects which were 
opened to him at Rome ; he expressed, however, great respect and 
regard for Cicero, as he was disposed at present to conciliate per- 
sons of every party, although Cicero, in conformity with the ex- 
ample of L. Phiiippus, did not address him by the name of Cae- 
sar. It is said, indeed, that both his mother and his father-in-law 
earnestly dissuaded him from coming forward as his uncle's heir, 
and from availing himself of his adoption into the Julian family ;*^ 
but his own resolution was taken, and he continued his jour- 
ney to Rome without loss of time. On his arrival in the capital 
he requested an interview with M. Antonius, hop- ^e is c^iiy received 
ing, probably, to form at once a coalition with him, ^y Antonius. 
in order to take vengeance on the perpetrators of his uncle's mur- 
der ; but Antonius was at this time in the height of his power, 
as the executor, in a manner, of Caesar's grants and ordinances ; 
nor was he disposed to admit such an associate as Octavius, who 
as the relation and heir of Caesar, would naturally take the high- 
est place in any party that might be formed to avenge his death. 

38 Velleius Paterculus, XL 59. ^i Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. X. 

39 Dion Cassius, XLV. 271. Velleius ^2 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. XI. 
Paterculus, ubi supra. *3 Velleius Paterculus, II. 60. Sueto- 

40 Appian, de Bello Civili, III. 12. nius, in Augusto, 8. 



368 CiESAR'S FRIENDS ARE SUSPICIOUS 

Accordingly he treated him with great coolness, and declined any 
co-operation with him ; upon which Octavius, not at all dis- 
couraged, proceeded to exhibit some games to the people in hon- 
our of Caesar's victories,^* the management of which was under- 
taken by two of Caesar's old friends, Matius and Postumius. It 
was on this occasion that Octavius ventured to exhibit Caesar's 
state chair, which the senate had allowed him to use whenever 
he appeared in public ; but the tribunes of the people ordered it 
to be removed ; and it appears that the whole of the equestrian 
order loudly applauded them for doing so. It is said, too, that 
Antonius in this instance supported the tribunes ;^^ and that he 
also opposed the views which Octavius entertained of being 
elected tribune himself,^^ in the place of one of that body who 
happened to die about this time. Irritated at this behaviour, Oc- 
tavius began to turn his attention to the aristocratical party, ^^ to 
speak with apparent respect of Brutus and Cassius, and seem de- 
sirous of courting the friendship of Cicero. . In the meantime he 
exerted himself more earnestly to secure to himself the attach- 
ment of the legions,^^ well knowing that if he could gain their 
support, he might make his own terms either with Antonius or 
with the aristocracy. 

We may suppose that Antonius felt himself greatly strength- 
ened by the favourable reception which Caesar's colonies of veter- 
ans had given him, during his progress through different parts of 
Italy in the months of April and May. The expectations of the 
veterans were raised by the reports so industriously spread, that 
their interests would be nearly concerned in the measures to be 
proposed at Rome when the senate should assemble on the first of 
June ; and it was probably whispered among them, that the aris- 
tocratical party would endeavour to recall or to diminish the grants 
Caesar's friends are of laud whlch they wcrc at present enjoying. Sus- 
l^^nfoHhe arlato- plcious of a similar kind were, indeed, not confined 
ciaticai party. ^q ^\^q soldlcrs and inferior officers, but were shared 

largely by those who had been most familiarly connected with 
Caesar, by Balbus, Hirtius, Oppius, Matius, and by their friends 
in general. Assassination is a crime which, when once practised 
or defended by a political party, must render it impossible for their 
opponents to trust them again ; and while Caesar's friends regarded 

4* Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. en variously and corruptly in the MSS. 

XXVIII. ; ad Atticuin, XV. epist. III. but which SchUtz, in his edition, has ven- 

45 Plutarch, in Antonio, 16. Appian, tured to alter, on conjecture, into De Le- 
de Bello Civili, III. 30. gione proht. He supposes that Cicero al- 

46 Suetonius, in Augusto, 10. Appian, ludes to a disposition manifested by one of 
III. .31. Dion Cassius, XLV. 272. the legions to take part against Antonius. 

it Cicero, ad Atticum,XV, epist. XII. That Octavius was intriguing with Caesar's 

*8 Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. IV. veterans is stated by Appian, III. 31 ; but 

dated the twenty-third of May. In this none of them actually joined him in arms 

letter there occurs a passage which is giv- till a later period. 



OP THE ARISTOCRATICAL PARTY. 359 

the late dictator as the victim of hisown unsuspecting confidence, 
they naturally imagined that the conspirators and their friends 
assumed the language of moderation only whilst they were over- 
awed by the populace and the veterans ;*^ and that so soon as 
Decimus Brutus should have organized an army in Cisalpine 
Gaul, and Sex. Pompeius with his rapidly increasing force should 
have arrived from Spain to join him. the aristocratical party would 
retract the concessions made in the temple of the Earth on the 
seventeenth of March, and would annul all the acts of Caesar's 
sovereignty, as they had formerly intended to do to those of his 
first consulship. With regard to Brutus and Cassius themselves, 
although they were living in apparent privacy at Lanuvium, yet 
it was suspected that they were turning their views towards the 
eastern provinces,^" and were trusting to establish their ascendency 
over that portion of the empire. Their associate Trebonius was 
already gone to take possession of the province of Asia. Gl. Cas- 
cilius Bassus was still in arms against Caesar's officers in Syria ; 
Deiotarus, king of Galatia,^! whom Caesar had deprived of a part 
of his dominions for his adherence to the cause of Pompey, had 
immediately, upon receiving tidings of Caesar's death, reinstated 
himself in the territories which he had lost ; the name of Cassius 
was highly respected in Syria, from the ability which he had 
shown in preserving the wreck of Crassus's army after the Parthian 
expedition, and more recently in conducting the operations of the 
Syrian squadron in Pompey's fleet, during the late civil wars ; 
and there were in Greece and Macedonia many who had suffered 
severely from Caesar's confiscation s,^^ and Avho would therefore 
gladly contribute to aid the reviving cause of the aristocracy. On 
all these accounts the better class of Caesar's friends distrusted the 
fair professions of the conspirators, and dreaded the approach of a 

49 Cicero, ad Atticum, XIV. epist. XXII. June or July, while appointing the praetors 
YnoOEaiv hanc habent, (scil. Caesariani,) as usual to their provincial governments, 
eamque prae se ferunt, virum clarissimum bestowed on them respectively Crete and, 
interfectum, totam Rempublicam illius in- as it appears, Cyrenaica. These proofs of 
teritu perturbatam ; irrita fore quae ille the inaccuracy of the later writers make 
egisset, simul ac desistamus timere ; cle- us approach with regret to that period when 
mentiam illi malo fuisse, qua si usus non we shall be obliged to follow them entirely, 
esset, nihil ei tale accidere potuisse. and when we shall lose the invaluable gui- 
se It is asserted by Appian, III. 2, and dance of Cicero, whose letters are our 
by Floras, IV. 7, that Macedonia and Syria only good authority for the transactions of 
had been assigned by Caesar to Brutus and these times. 
Cassius before his death ; and Appian si Cicero, Philippic. II. 37. 
adds, that this appointment was confirmed S2 The people of Buthrotum in Epirus, 
by the senate on the 17th of March, but for instance, are often spoken of in Cice- 
afterwards revoked by Antonius before the ro's letters as having had their lands con- 
arrival of Octavius at Rome. But it is fiscated by Caesar for the benefit of his 
evident from Cicero, that this was not the veterans. And the people of Dyme, in 
case, and that Brutus and Cassius had not, Achaia, being in the same predicament, had 
like Trebonius and Decimus Bratus, any recourse to piracy about this very time, to 
provinces of which they could claim the afford them a maintenance. See Cicero, 
command, till the senate, in the month of ad Atticum, XVI, epist. I. 



370 LAWS PASSED BY ANTONIUS AND DOLABELLA. 

counter-revolution ; while Antonius and Dolabella, sharing these 
feelings perhaps themselves, and at any rate well aware of the 
policy of pretending to feel them, prepared to make these sus- 
picions their own ground of justification for the violent course 
which they were now going to pursue. 

The presence of the veterans at Rome, and the hostile feelings 
which they were said to entertain towards the friends of the old 
constitution, created an unwillingness on the part of the conspira- 
tors and their friends, to attend the approaching meeting of the 
senate on the first of June. As the day drew nearer, the violent 
dispositions of the soldiers seemed likely to find a leader in Anto- 
nius ; and the show of military force at his disposal was so 
menacing, that a considerable portion of the senators absented 
themselves from the capital,^ ^ and their absence furnished Anto- 
nius with a pretext for neglecting the authority of the senate from 
Laws passes by Anto- thls tlmc forward. Accordingly, on the second of 
nius and Dolabella. Juue,^* d. law was passed in the assembly of the 
people, intrusting to the consuls the entire cognizance of all Cae- 
sar's acts and measures, and thus sanctioning that absolute con- 
trol which they already exercised, by having Caesar's papers in 
their possession ; and, it is added, his secretary in their pay.^s 
Another law bestowed on Antonius the command of the province 
of Cisalpine Gaul for six years,^^ together with the army which 
had been sent over into Greece by Caesar, in preparation for his 
expedition against Parthia. This was in direct violation of Cae- 
sar's law, which forbade the consular provinces to be given to any 
one for a longer period than two years ; but, if we may believe 
Cicero,^'' the soldiers of Antonius occupied all the avenues to the 
forum, and kept out all whom they thought likely to oppose the 
measure. At the same time Macedonia was given for two years, 
equally in defiance of Caesar's law, to C. Antonius, the brother of 
Marcus, who was one of the praetors for the year f^ and P. Dola- 
bella obtained the appointment to the province of Syria. 

On the fifth of June the senate was again assembled,^' and it 
was voted that Brutus should be sent into Asia, and Cassius into 
Sicily, to buy corn, and see that it was transported to Rome for 
the supply of the market of the capital. Brutus and Cassius were 
at this time at Antiura,8° and Cicero met them there on the eighth, 
and consulted with them on the propriety of accepting or refusing 
such an appointment. The commission to buy corn they con- 
sidered as degrading ; and Servilia, the mother of Brutus, who, 

53 Cicero, Philippic. 11. 42. 57 Philippic. I. 2. 10 ; V. 4. 

54 Cicero, ad Atticum.XVI. epist. XVI. ss Cicero, Philippic. V. 3. Dion Gas- ' 

55 Cicero, ad Atlicum, XIV. epist. sius, XLV. 274. 277. 

XVIII. Appian, de Bello Civiii, III. 5. ^^ Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. IX. 

56 Cicero, Philippic. V. 3 ; II. 42 ; I. 2. 6° Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. XI. 
8. Dion Cassius, XLV. 274. 



LAWS PASSED BY ANTONIUS TO GRATIFY THE ARMY. 371 

from her intimacy with Csesar, enjoyed considerable influence 
amongst the members of his party, assured Cassius, who was 
particularly averse to it, that she would procure the repeal of that 
part of the senate's decree which related to the corn. However, 
both Brutus and Cassius were invested with the character of pub- 
lic officers, and provinces were voted to them in common with 
the other preetors ;^^ but whether the vote was passed at this time, 
or a few weeks later, does not sufficiently appear. It was pro- 
posed, we are told, by Antonius, and was accompanied by a permis- 
sion to them to appoint a greater number of lieutenants than was 
usually allowed ; for Antonius had not yet laid aside the appear- 
ance of friendship towards them. Yet his other acts as consul 
seemed to declare that he was not really inclined to content him- 
self with the condition of a citizen in a free commonwealth. He 
brought forward at once an agrarian law, a change 
in the constitution of the judicial power, and another ^"^^ ° " °°"^' 
in the manner of proceeding against persons charged with rioting, 
or with treasonable practices. So invariably did each new adven- 
turer tread in the steps of his predecessors, and endeavour to re- 
open the door which they had successively hoped to shut against 
all future demagogues, so soon as they had themselves passed 
through it. By his agrarian law, Antonius proposed to nominate 
a commission of seven persons,^- who were to possess the usual 
exorbitant powers granted to such commissioners in declaring what 
were national domains, and in distributing them at their pleasure. 
Their authority was so extensive, that Cicero hyperbolically 
describes them as empowered to divide the whole of Italy ;«* 
and it is mentioned, that Campania," together with some of the 
most valuable lands possessed by the commonwealth in Sicily, 
were amongst the districts to be subjected to their disposal. The 
constitution of the judicial power had been, as we have seen, a fre- 
quent subject of dispute during the course of the last century ; and 
one of Caesar's late enactments had bestowed it, exclusively, on the 
senatorian and equestrian orders, and had repealed the more liberal 
provisions of the Aurelian law, by which it had been communica- 
ted also to some of the wealthiest class of the plebeians. Antonius, 
however, proposed not only to repeal Caesar's restrictions, but to 
open the judicial power more indiscriminately than ever, by mak- 
ing any man eligible who had ever held the rank of centurion j^^ 
and, in fact, by so removing all the qualifications formerly required, 
that common soldiers and naturalized foreigners might now be- 
come judges. His third and worst measure was to allow an ap- 
peal to the people from all persons convicted before the ordinary 
tribunals, of any acts in violation of the public peace ;^® a law 

61 Cicero, Philippic. II. 13. «* Cicero, Philippic. II. 39. 

62 Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. XIX. ^^ Cicero, Philippic. I. 8 ; V. 5, 6. 

63 Cicero, Philippic. V. 3, es Cicero, Philippic. I. 9. 10. 



372 ANIMOSITY BETWEEN ANTONIUS AND THE CONSPIRATORS. 

which was, in fact, a promise of impunity to all Avho should be 
guilty of riots or seditions. These acts were all carried, it is said, 
by violence,^'' and in contempt of all the religious impediments 
with which their opponents attempted to obstruct their course. 
Antonius was openly escorted by armed men in the forum and in 
the senate ; and the veterans, whose grants of land he had taken 
care to confirm by the authority of the people, were present in 
crowds in the capital to support him against all opposition. 

While these proceedings were going on at Rome, Brutus and 
Growing animosity Casslus wcrc chicfly at Autium, or in Campania : 
and'' me t^nspira' ^^'^^ ^o^h werc preparing to pass over into Asia. 
^°'^- Brutus was to exhibit some games at Rome in the 

early part of July f^ but as as he did not like to appear in the 
city himself, C. Antonius, as one of his colleagues in the piaetor- 
ship, undertook the management of them in his name. It was 
on this occasion that the people eagerly caught at some passages 
in one of the dramatic entertainments which seemed applicable to 
Brutus, and received them with enthusiastic applause. This, 
perhaps, irritated and alarmed Antonius ; nor was he pleased that 
Brutus and Cassius, in one of their proclamations which they 
issued as praetors, should have declared their intention still to ab- 
sent themselves from Rome on account of the disordered state of 
the capital,^^ and that they were evidently preparing to leave 
Italy and repair to the eastern provinces. Antonius, in a counter- 
proclamation, treated this language as a declaration of war, and 
threatened to have recourse to arms ; his tone in his public 
speeches became more arrogant ; and he was heard to say openly 
that none could hope to save their lives, except their party should 
prove victorious f which was, in other words, a denunciation of 
woe to the vanquished. L. Piso, Caesar's father-in-law," ^ ven- 
tured to speak against Antonius in the senate on the first of Au- 
gust, but no one supported him, and finding all resistance hope- 
less, he forbore to attend in the senate again. Yet soon after this 
it appears that Brutus and Cassius entertained the hope of organ- 
izing a more successful opposition ;" for they sent letters to all the 
senators of consular and praetorian rank, requesting them to be pre- 
sent in the senate on the first of September ; and on the seventeenth 
of August, Brutus met Cicero at Velia ; and finding that he had 
already renounced his design of leaving Italy, and was then 
returning to Rome, he expressed the greatest satisfaction at this 
change of purpose, and his hopes that Cicero was going to take 

67 Cicero, Philippic. I. 10 ; II. 42 ; V. T" Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. 

4. 6, 7. XXII.;; Philippic. V. 8, nisi victorem, ne- . 

65 Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. minem victurum. 

XXVI. ; XVI. epist. I. II. Dion Cassius, "^i Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. 

XLVIl. 338. VII. ; Philippic. I. 4. 6. 

69 Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. III. ''2 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. VII. 



SEX. POMPEIUS RESTORED TO HIS COUNTRY. 373 

an active part in the administration of the commonwealth. It is 
probable that Brutus and Cassius, being now fully resolved to se- 
cure to themselves, if possible, the resources of the eastern prov- 
inces, were anxious to acquire such a support in the senate as 
might free them from the charge of rebellion, and might insure for 
all their proceedings the sanction of the government at home. 
We cannot tell, however, by what means they hoped to deprive 
Antonius of his military superiority in Italy ; and yet, while he 
retained it they could not calculate on their party's obtaining the 
ascendency either in the senate or in the forum. Perhaps they 
trusted that many of Caesar's old officers, and particularly Hirtius 
and Pansa, the two consuls elect, were disgusted with the late 
conduct of Antonius, and would be able to counteract his influ- 
ence over the minds of the soldiers." But their plans and their 
cause were finally ruined by the interference of C. Octavius, who, 
taking to himself the part which Hirtius and Pansa might have 
performed sincerely and effectually, succeeded indeed in drawing 
away the army from Antonius, but only to attach it to himself; 
and coming forward as the heir and adopted son of Csesar, rallied 
around him the whole strength of his uncle's adherents, and was 
thus enabled, eventually, to dictate terms to Antonius on the one 
hand, and on the other to crush for ever the reviving hopes of the 
aristocracy. 

It was about this time that the aristocratical party lost an 
army, which, if it had existed for a few months sex.pompeiusrestor- 
longer, might have altered the whole complexion agrl°emlnt°w?thLep" 
of affairs. We have already stated that Sex. Pom- *'"^- 
peius was in arms against the officers of Cassar in Spain, at the 
period of Caesar's assassination. He had been gradually in- 
creasing his strength, had defeated C. Asinius Pollio, Caesar's 
lieutenant,^* and had made himself master of New Carthage, and 
of most of the towns in what was called the Farther Spain. The 
tidings of Caesar's death gave him great encouragement, and pro- 
duced a general sensation in his favour ; he had seven legions un- 
der his command, which constituted a formidable force, although 
they were probably composed chiefly of ill-disciplined troops, and 
might not perhaps have had their full complement in point of 
numbers. Thus circumstanced, he addressed a letter to the con- 
suls at Rome, couched, according to Cicero, in firm but temperate 
language, in which he demanded his restoration to his country ; 
and that all armies in every part of the empire should be equally 
disbanded. At the same time he wrote to his father-in-law, 
L. Libo,'^^ to say that he would conclude no peace unless he could 
recover the property of his father which had been confiscated by 

'S Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. XXII. 74 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. IV, 
dated on the 25th of June. Dion Cassius, XLV. 274, 275. 

'''5 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. IV. 



374 CICERO COMMENCES HIS OPPOSITION TO ANTONIUS. 

Caesar, and sold to different individuals by public auction. The 
validity of these sales, as well as of all the rest of Caesar's acts, 
had been recently confirmed by law ; and besides, Antonius him- 
self had been the purchaser of Pompey's house at Rome, and was 
now actually residing in- it.; so that it was not likely to be given 
up without some compensation. But at this time M. Lepidus com- 
manded the province of the Hither Spain, ''^ and thus found him- 
self exposed to the first attacks of an enemy who had already 
overrun the whole of the Farther Spain, and had defeated one of 
Caesar's lieutenants in the field. Lepidus felt himself unequal to 
the contest, and was therefore warmly disposed to accede to all 
that Sex. Pompeius requested." The senate willingly confirmed 
what Lepidus had promised ; and it was agreed that Sex. Pom- 
peius should be restored to his country, and that a sum amount- 
ing to about 5,650,000/. should be granted to him out of the trea- 
sury, to enable him to redeem his father's property. Satisfied 
with these conditions, Pompeius gave up his army, quitted the 
province in which he had so long maintained himself, and re- 
paired to Massilia,''^ where he remained for some time in a state 
of suspense, not deeming it expedient or safe to return to Rome 
in the midst of those disorders which had now again begun to 
distract the commonwealth. 

We have said that Cicero was met by Brutus at Velia on the 
Cicero commences Seventeenth of August, and was requested by him 
Antonui^°°"'°° ° to takc au active part from henceforward in the 
management of public afiairs ; in other words, to put himself at 
the head of the aristocratical party, and make one vigorous at- 
tempt to recover for them their ancient ascendency. This, indeed, 
was now become Cicero's fixed resolution ; he thought he saw a 
more favourable opportunity for acting with effect, than had oc- 
curred at any period of the late war between Caesar and Pompey ; 
and laying aside at last all hesitation, he went to Rome to com- 
mence his memorable career of opposition to Antonius, and to all 
the partisans of his revolutionary system. He arrived in the 
capital on the thirty-first of August, and on the following day the 
senate was to assemble, in order to vote a solemn thanksgiving to 
the gods in honour of Cassar's exploits. According to his own ac- 
count,'^' Cicero feeling some fatigue from his journey, and not con- 
sidering the business on which the senate was summoned to be 
very important, forbore to attend the meeting. His absence greatly 
exasperated Antonius, who interpreted it probably into an insinu- 
ation that it was useless to appear in the senate while the debates 

''^ Cicero, Philippic. V. 14, 15 ; XIII. Paterculus on another occasion, II. 63, 
4, 5. Dion Cassius, XLV. 275. and it is equally applicable here. 

''T Quum Lepido omnes Imperatores '^ Cicero, Philippic. XIII. 6. Appian, 
forent meliores, is the remark of Velleius de Bello Civili, IV. 84. 

■^9 Cicero, Philippic. I. 5, et seq. 



OCTAVIUS COMES FORWARD AGAINST ANTONIUS. 375 

of that body were overawed by a military force. Accordingly, 
Antonius spoke with great violence, and threatened to come and 
pull down Cicero's house, if he persisted in absenting himself It 
was usual, we must remember, for the consuls to enforce the at- 
tendance of senators either by a fine, or by seizing some article of 
their property as a security for their appearance ; but the threat of 
Antonius far exceeded the authority which any former consuls 
had been known to exercise in similar circumstances. On the 
following day, however, Cicero did attend the senate, when An- 
tonius in his turn was absent ; and he then delivered the speech 
which is known by the name of the first Philippic Oration. It 
contains a strong condemnation of the measures which Antonius 
was pursuing, expressed however in temperate language, and un- 
mixed with personalities ; yet it gave Antonius the greatest of- 
fence. He summoned the senate to meet again on the nineteenth 
of September, and on that day replied to Cicero's attack upon 
his measures by a violent invective,^" in which, amongst other 
things, he charged him with being an accomplice in Caesar's 
murder ; intending, as Cicero asserted, to excite the resentment of 
the veterans against him, and hoping that they would make some 
attempts on his life, if he ventured to appear in the senate-house. 
But Cicero having suspected, whether justly or no, that he could 
not attend without danger, >vas resolved not to risk the experi- 
ment : and similar fears, he tells us, kept away P. Servilius, who 
had expressed the same sentiments as he had done on the second 
of September ; and L. Piso, who had set the first example of op- 
position to Antonius, by his speech on the first of August. The 
famous oration, therefore, which is entitled the Second Philippic, 
and which professes to have been spoken in the senate on the 
nineteenth of September, in reply to the invectives of Antonius, 
was in reality never delivered at all, but was written by Cicero 
about this time, and sent to Atticus in the month of October, with 
an express caution that he would not let it be seen by those 
friends of Antonius who were in the habit of visiting at his 
house.^ ' In fact Cicero retired into the country soon afterwards, 
and remained for some time at one or other of his villas, only 
going to Rome at intervals, and leaving it again immediately. 
He thought that nothing could be done in the senate till the new 
consuls entered upon their office ; meantime an unexpected ene- 
my suddenly came forward against Antonius, and attacked him 
with weapons more eifectual than Cicero's eloquence. 

We have seen that C. Octavius had been coolly received by 
Antonius at his first arrival in Rome, after Caesar's c. octayius comes 
murder. It is said, that not content with slighting tonTu/. ^^*"'*'-*^"' 

8» Cicero, Philippic. V. 7 : ad Familia- ^i Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. XI. 
res, XII. epist. II. Caleni interventum et Calrense cavebis. 

25 



376 



ALARM OP ANTONIUS. 



him as a political associate, Antonius endeavoured to obstruct, or 
at least to delay, his adoption into the Julian family ; as he could 
not claim the possession of his uncle's inheritance^'^ till he had gone 
through the forms by which he became Csesar's adopted son. 
On this provocation, Octavius resolved to do himself justice by 
the most atrocious means, and although he was only nineteen 
years of age, he suborned some ruffians to assassinate Antonius,*^ 
the consul of the republic, in his own house. The attempt was 
discovered in time, but it threw Antonius into the utmost perplex- 
ity and alarm. As it had not succeeded, a large portion of the 
people doubted its reality, and believed that the charge had been 
falsely brought forward against Octavius, in order to procure his 
ruin, that Antonius might enjoy his property without disturbance. 
So strong in fact was the public feeling, and so unpopular was 
Antonius at this period, that he did not think it advisable to bring 
his intended assassins to trial. But he trembled at the insecurity 
of his situation ; and finding that Octavius was now leagued with 
his enemies, and being informed probably of the intrigues which 
he was carrying on with Caesar's veterans, he thought that he 
should require the support of a stronger mihtary force than the 
guard with which he had hitherto protected his person, and by 
which he had overawed the senate and the forum. In justice to 
his memory we should remember, that the assassination of Caesar 
might well have deterred him from exposing himself in a similar 
manner to the daggers of the conspirators or of their partisans ; 
and that when Cicero so loudly complains of the introduction of 
a barbarian guard into the senate-house, he should have reflected 
that the crime, committed by his own friends, had rendered such 
a precaution natural, if not necessary. Be this as it may, Antoni- 
us thought his present force insufficient any longer to defend him ; 
and, accordingly, he set out on the ninth of October for Brundu- 
sium,^^ in order to secure the four legions which were quartered in 
that neighbourhood, and which having formed part of the army 
assembled in Macedonia by Csesar for his Parthian expedition, had 
lately returned to Italy, and remained still embodied, under no 
other authority than that of their own immediate officers. When 
he arrived at Brundusium^' he proceeded to address the soldiers, 
and offered to each man a gratuity of about 3/. 45. Id.., in order to 
win them to his interests ; but far from receiving this offer with 
thankfulness, the troops murmured at it and ridiculed it, as utterly 
inadequate to their expectations ; and many of the centurions and 
soldiers appeared inclined to disown his authority altogether. 
Alarmed at these symptoms, he sent for several of those centurions, 

82 Floras, IV. 4. Dion Cassius, XLV. ^4 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist, 

272. XXIII. 

«3 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. ^^ Dion Cassias, XLV. 276. Cicero, 

XXIII. Seneca, de dementia, I. 9. Philippic. III. 2; V. 8. 



THE LEGIONS PREFER OCTAVIUS. 377 

whom he most suspected, to his own quarters, and there caused 
them to be instantly executed. But this severity failed to effect its 
object ; the legions could not be prevailed upon to follow him ; and 
at the same time the tidings which he received of the proceedings of 
Octavius, made him feel the necessity of returning to Rome with- 
out delay. In fact, no sooner had he set out for Brundusium, than 
Octavius hastened into Campania, and by giving to He persuades caesar-s 
each man a donation of about 16^.,^^ he prevailed veterans to join wm. 
upon Caesar's veterans, who had been settled at Casilinum and 
Calatia, to join his standard. He then applied to some other of the 
military colonies in that neighbourhood, and succeeded in raising 
a considerable force, which he began to organize at Capua with 
the greatest activity. The municipal towns,^'' no less than the 
establishments of the veterans, testified the strongest attachment 
to his cause ; and he wrote at the same time to Cicero, requesting 
a personal interview with him, asking his advice as to his subse- 
quent movements, and wishing him to come forward as his avowed 
associate, and to exert his influence in the senate in his behalf. 

Cicero could not but entertain a natural distrust of so danger- 
ous an assistant ; and expressed, in a letter to Atticus,^^ his una- 
vailing wishes that Brutus were at hand instead of Octavius to 
turn the impending crisis to the advantage of the commonwealth. 
But Brutus and Cassius were already on the other side of the 
Ionian Gulf 5 and to wait for their return was impossible. In an 
evil hour, therefore, for himself, did Cicero listen to the advances 
of Octavius, and encourage him to repair to Rome, and endeavour 
to strengthen his party by the favour of the popular assembly. 
Octavius adopted this plan, and was introduced into the forum, 
and brought forward to speak, by the tribune Tiberius Canutius,^^ 
one of the most violent enemies of Antonius. But his speech was 
ill calculated to please the aristocratical party ; for he attempted, 
we are told, to recommend himself to the popular favour as the 
heir and adopted son of Caesar ; he dwelt largely on the great 
services of the late dictator ; and when making some promises 
with regard to his own future conduct, he stretched out his hand 
towards a statue of Caesar, which Antonius had lately placed in 
the rostra,®" and swore that he would be true to his word, "as he 
hoped to arrive at his father's greatness." But not feeling himself 
strong enough as yet to maintain the capital against Antonius, 
and finding, if we may believe Appian, that the veterans were not 
well disposed to fight in such a quarrel, he withdrew into Tus- 

8S Cicero, ad Atticum. XVI. epist. VIII. 89 Djon Cassius, XLV. 276. Appian, 

IX. deBelloCivili, III. 41. 

87 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. XI. 90^Cicero,ad Familiares, XII. epist. III. 

88 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist. VIII. ad Atticum, XVI. epist. XV. Jurat., " ita 
" Brute, ubi es ? quantam twaipiav amit- sibi parentis honores consequi liceat ;" et 
tis !" simul dextram intendit ad statuam. 



378 EFFORTS OF ANTONIUS TO SECURE SUPPORT. 

cany with his forces, and endeavoured to get some assistance from 
that quarter. 

In the mean time, Antonius was returning with all speed to 
Rome, attended by the legion of the Alaudse,*' a corps which had 
been raised by Caesar in Transalpine Gaul, and had afterwards, 
as we have seen, been admitted by him to the rights of Roman 
citizens. Since his death this legion had been greatly favoured 
by Antonius, and its common soldiers had been rendered capable, 
by his law, of serving amongst the third order of judges on crimi- 
nal trials. He had, therefore, apparently taken it with him to 
Brundusium, and was now returning with it to Rome ; for the 
four legions which he had gone to secure, had not received him 
so cordially as to induce him to rely on them in any critical ser- 
vice ; and he was well satisfied that they should consent to march 
by themselves towards Gaul, there, as he hoped, to receive him as 
their commander, when he should arrive to take possession of 
that province. The Alaudse then formed his escort when he ap- 
proached Rome, and were left by him at Tibur, while he entered 
the city with no other force apparently than that which he had 
been long in the habit of employing to support his authority or 
secure his person. He then, as consul, issued a number of pro- 
clamations,^^ charging Octavius with rebellion, and threatening the 
severest punishments against some other individaals whom he 
considered as his abettors. He summoned the senate to meet on 
the twenty-fourth of November, and announced that if any mem- 
ber absented himself, he would be justly considered as a conspira- 
tor against the consul's life, and a party to the treasonable counsels 
Two of the legions of Octavius. But hc soou Icamed that one of the 
for3ct"vfur'"'^ legions from Brundusium,'^ instead of pursuing its 
march towards Gaul, had suddenly turned off towards the capital, 
and had actually stationed itself at Alba in a state of open diso- 
bedience to his authority. He then repaired to the troops whom 
he had left at Tibur, and tried, we may suppose, to assure himself 
of their fidelity, by promising to them abundant rewards out of 
the property of his antagonists. 

Again he returned to Rome, feeling it important, if possible, 
still to maintain possession of the capital ; and not choosing, what- 
ever was his reason, to attend in the senate on the twenty-fourth, 
he postponed the meeting of that body to the twenty-eighth,'^ and 
summoned the senators then to assemble in the capitol. He was 
extremely anxious to fortify himself by their authority, and to 
obtain a vote which should declare Octavius and his abbettors 
public enemies. For this purpose he prohibited three individuals 
by name,'5 all of them his vehement opponents, from appearing 

81 Cicero, ad Atticum, XVI. epist.VIII. ^^ Cicero, Philippic. III. 8. 

92 Cicero, Philippic. III. 7, 8. »5 Cicero, Philippic. III. 9. 

93 Cicero, Philippic. III. 3 ; XIII. 9. 



ANTONIUS RETIRES TO CISALPINE GAUL. 379 

m the senate on this occasion ; threatening one of them with 
death, according to Cicero, if he ventured to disobey his injunction. 
But just before the senate assembled, he was informed that the 
fourth legioUj^^ another of those which he had met at Brundusium, 
had not only stopped its march towards Gaul, but had actually 
joined the standard of Octavius in Tuscany. Under the impres- 
sion produced on men's minds by this intelligence, he dared not 
submit to the senate his intended motion on the state of the com- 
monwealth, lest the decision of the majority might rather favour 
his enemies than himself. His only hope lay in the success of 
his arms, and in stopping, by his presence, the growing spirit of 
disaffection among the soldiers. Accordingly, the senate was only 
consulted on the (^estion of voting the usual thanksgivings to the 
gods in honour of M. Lepidus for his services in Spain ; and as 
soon as the senators separated, Antonius proceeded to the custom- 
ary allotment of the provinces to the different magistrates of the 
year on the expiration of their term of office. His brother, C. 
Antonius, received his nomination to the province of Macedonia, 
which had been already, as we have seen, conferred on him by 
the people ; and he himself, in the same manner, entered upon 
his own appointment to the command of Cisalpine Antonius retires from 
Gaul. He immediately assumed the military dress, GaS"f *° cisaipme 
and left the city with the utmost secrecy to take the command of 
his troops at Tibur j^'' whence he hastened, by cross roads, to- 
wards his province, fearing lest Octavius might intercept his march. 
On his arrival at Ariminum, he found there the two remaining 
legions from Brundusium, which acknowledged his authority 
without dispute ; and with them a third, according to Appian,** 
which had returned from Macedonia after Antonius's departure 
from Brundusium, and, choosing to embrace his party, had fol- 
lowed the other two which still adhered to him into Gaul. These 
forces, together with the legion of the Alaudee, and a considerable 
number of the veterans from Cassar's colonies, who preferred his 
service to that of Octavius, formed altogether an imposing army ; 
and there was nothing in Cisalpine Gaul which could offer to them 
any resistance in the field. But Decimus Brutus, He is opposed by Dec. 
who, as we have seen, had held the command of siege"^ln"Mutaa" 
that province for some months, was resolved not lightly to abandon 
it ; and, accordingly, threw himself into the town of Mutina," to 
maintain that place against the invader. Antonius immediately 
advanced and began to lay siege to it : and thus the commonwealth 
was again involved in a civil war, when little more than a year 
had elapsed since the termination of hostilities in Spain, and the 
last triumphant return of Caesar to Rome. 

93 Cicero, Philippic. III. 3. 9. 93 De Bello Civili, III. 43. 48. 

37 Cicero, Philippic. III. 10. 99 Cicero, Philippic. XIII. 9. 



380 CICERO RETURNS TO ROME. 

When Antonius left the capital to take possession of Cisalpine 
Gaul, his colleague, P. Dolabella, seems to have been already on 
his way towards Syria. We find that he was at his villa, near 
Formise, in the latter end of October,^"' and that he was then 
making some arrangements for the payment of a debt due from 
him to Cicero, while he should be absent from Italy. 

Hence he probably crossed over into Greece soon afterwards, 
accompanied by a small military force ; so that Rome, in the be- 
ginning of December, was deserted by both the consuls, while of 
the tribunes, two at least, Tiberius Canutius and L. Cassius, were 
warmly devoted to the party of the aristocracy. The senate and 
people of Rome seemed now, for the first time during many years, 
to have been left to express their sentiments freely ; the terror of a 
military force was removed on the one hand, nor does the peace 
of the city seem to have been disturbed by any disorders of the 
populace on the other. The measures of the government, there- 
fore, and the votes of individuals were likely now, if ever, to be 
independent, and wise, and pure, debased only by that inevitable 
alloy which the actions and principles of men will always con- 
tract from the original folly and selfishness of human nature. But 
the influence of eloquence is a less unworthy motive than the fear of 
the sword ; and it was a fit reward for the general purity of Cicero's 
character, that his ascendency marked the last moments of his 
country's freedom ; and that when Rome was left to herself, she 
Cicero returns to followcd hls guldaucc witli euthusiastic affection. 
Rome. Immediately on the departure of Antonius, he hasten- 

ed to return to the capital, where he arrived on the ninth of De- 
cember.'" The tribunes had summoned the senate to meet on 
the twentieth, that a vote might be passed empowering the consuls 
elect, Hirtius and Pansa, to provide for the assembling the senate 
in safety on the first of January. A very few days before the 
twentieth, there appeared a proclamation from Decimus Brutus, in 
which he engaged to maintain the province of Cisalpine Gaul 
against the attempts of Antonius, and to preserve it in a state of 
obedience to the authority of the senate and people. This de- 
claration was likely to encourage the timid and the wavering ; 
and that the impression produced by it might not be lost, Cicero 
went very early to the senate on the morning of the twentieth, 
and having thus awakened an interest in men's minds, and pro- 
cured a full attendance of senators, he delivered the speech which 
is entitled the third philippic. In this he proposed that the senate 
should declare its approbation of the conduct of Decimus Brutus, 
and of the province of Cisalpine Gaul, in upholding the senate's 
authority ; that it should also express its gratitude to Octavius, 

100 Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. XIII. lo^ Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. V. 

VI. Philippic. III. 4, 5. 



Q. PUFIUS CALENUS DEFENDS ANTONIUS IN THE SENATE. 38 1 

and to the two legions which had deserted Antonius ; and that it 
should order Decimus Brutus, and all other officers who held com- 
mands in the provinces by virtue of Csesar's arrangements, to 
retain their governments till the senate should think proper to 
supersede them. The senate agreed to all that Cicero wished j^"? 
and thus not only was M. Antonius adjudged to have no preten- 
sions to the province of Gaul, but the claims of his brother upon 
Macedonia, and of P. Dolabelia upon Syria, were condemned on 
the same ground. Meanwhile the siege of Mutina was carried on 
with vigour by Antonius, and Octavius having intercepted some 
cavalry, archers, and elephants, ^"^ which were on their way to 
join the besieging army, was proceeding to attempt the relief of 
the town, as soon as he should be strengthened by the arrival of 
the consuls with fresh troops from Rome. Such was the state of 
things when the first of January arrived, and the new consuls, A. 
Hirtius and C. Vibius Pansa, entered upon their 
office. They assembled the senators on the very u.c.tio. 

first day of their consulship ; first to consult them generally on 
the commonwealth, and then to determine on the honours which 
were to be paid to C. Octavius and to his followers, according to 
the resolution passed before at the meeting of *the twentieth of 
December. 

It was not to be expected, composed as the senate was in a 
considerable proportion of the partisans of Caesar, a. Fufius caienus de- 
that Antonius should be left altogether without an senate. " 
advocate. The person who first came forward in his behalf was 
Q,. Fufius Caienus, who had been made consul by Csesar during 
the last three or four months of the year 706, and had before com- 
manded a separate division of his army in the campaign of the 
preceding year in Greece. At an earlier period, in the year 692, 
he had been one of the tribunes ; and it was owing to a law pro- 
posed by him,>°* and directing that the judges should be chosen 
by lot, instead of selected by the prastor, that P. Clodius obtained 
an acquittal, when tried for his infamous profanation of the mys- 
teries of the Bona Dea in Cassar's house. He now moved that a 
deputation from the senate should be sent to Antonius, to demand 
of him that he should raise the siege of Mutina ; '"^ that he should 
abstain from all acts of hostility against Decimus Brutus and the 
province of Cisalpine Gaul ; and that he should submit himself 
to the authority of the senate and people. If he refused to com- 
ply with these demands, he was to be declared a public enemy, 
and the whole population of the state was to assume the military 
dress, as in a war of the last importance to the general safety. It 

^. i"2 Cicero, Philippic. IV. 1, etseq. Dion lo-i Cicero, ad Atticum, I. epist. XVI. 
C>^5sius, XLV. 277. Wo Cicero, Philippic, VI. 2, 3. 

103 Cicero, Philippic. V. 17. Dion Cas- 
sias, XLV. 276. 



382 THE SENATE MAKES PROPOSALS OF PEACE TO ANTONIUS. 

was not supposed that Antonius would accede to the terms of- 
fered him ; and as he would gain time to prosecute the siege of 
Mutina, and to strengthen his party whilst the deputation should 
be going to his camp from Rome and returning with his answer, 
Cicero, well aware of the necessity of decisive measures, was 
anxious, on this very accomit, that he should be declared a pub- 
lic enemy immediately, and that the people should be summoned 
at once to take up arms against him. After a vehement debate, 
however, which was protracted by successive adjournments during 
three days, the proposal of Q,. Calenus prevailed, and it was re- 
solved that a deputation should be sent to Antonius.'"^ On other 
points, the opinion of Cicero was followed ; settlements of land 
were promised to the veterans and to the two legions which had 
joined Octavius ; ' °'' and an exemption from military service was 
granted to them and to their children, except in the case of a 
war breaking out in Gaul or in Italy. L. Egnatuleius, the quaestor 
who had led the fourth legion over to Octavius, was allowed to be 
a candidate for and to hold any public office three years before he 
should have attained tlie age prescribed by law. To Octavius 
still higher honours were paid. He was constituted an officer of 
the commonwealth, with the title and authority of propraetor ; he 
"Was admitted into the senate among the senators of piEetorian 
rank ; he was allowed to be a candidate for all public offices sev- 
eral years earlier than the law permitted ; and on the motion of 
his step-father, L. Philippus,!''^ an equestrian statue was erected 
to his honour in the rostra. 

Immediately after this debate, the deputation, which was to 
A deputation sent caHy the commauds of the senate to Antonius, set 
A^toni'uVw^thpro- out ou its joumcy. It consisted of three members : 
po3ais of peace. gcrvius Sulplclus, the Celebrated lawyer whom 
Cassar had appointed proconsul of Achaia in the year 707 ; L. 
Philippus, the step-father of Octavius ; and L. Calpurnius Piso, 
the father-in-law of Caesar, Avho had formerly, when consul, coun- 
tenanced the attacks of Clodius upon Cicero, in order to win the 
favour of the triumvirate. About the same time, A. Hirtius took 
the field and marched to the relief of Mutina;'"^ while his 
colleagiie, C. Pansa, remained at Rome to superintend the levies 
of troops which were carrying on with the greatest activity. 
Cicero meanwhile was exerting himself to the utmost to strengthen 
the cause of the commonwealth by securing the fidelity of the 
diffi^rent commanders in the western provinces. If Antonius were 
obliged to retreat from before Mutina, it was a question of the 
last importance to him, to ascertain whether he could hope to 
find an asylum and support in the armies of Spain and of Trans- 
it Cicsro, Philippic VI. 1. los Cicero, ad Bnitiim, I. cpist. XV. 
107 Cicero, Philippic. V. 17. 19. VelleiusPaterculus, II. 61. 

'09 Cicero, Philippic. VII. 



OFFICERS COMMANDING IN GAUL AND SPAIN. 333 

alpine Gaul. There were three officers who held Account or the officera 
commands at this time in those countries ; M. ^mi- and'Sn"^ 
lius Lepidus, the proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis, and of the 
Hither or Nearer Spain ; L. Munatius Plancus, who enjoyed the 
government of all the other parts of Transalpine Gaul added by 
Caesar's conquests to the Roman empire ; and C. Asinius Pollio, 
who had been employed in the Farther Spain against Sex. Pom- 
peius with the title of Cassar's lieutenant, and still possessed the 
chief authority in that province. Of these three 

T • T Tiii ••ii^ i i-iM. ^milius Lepidus. 

men, Lepidus was likely to join that party which 
could most work upon his hopes of personal advantage ; but his 
inclinations would lead him to oppose the cause of the common- 
wealth, inasmuch as the forms of the old constitution would con- 
fine within moderate bounds his irregular ambition. . L. Munati- 
us Plancus is mentioned as one of those persons who 

11 ./. r~A iii,- 1 L- Munatius Plancus. 

received large presents irom Caesar, at the time when 
he was employing the plunder of Gaul in purchasing partisans 
among the needy and the prodigal at Rome.^^° When the civil 
war began, we find that L. Plancus was in Caesar's service, and 
held a command in his army in Spain during the campaign 
against Afranius and Petreius.'^' At a later period he was one 
of his lieutenants in Africa ;"2 and on the whole, his conduct 
throughout the war obtained for him from Caesar the appoint- 
ment to the province of Transalpine Gaul, and the nomination to 
the consulship for the year 711, together with Decimus Brutus, 
so that he was at this time consul elect. His reputation however 
had not kept pace with his fortune. Cicero tells him plainly, in 
one of his letters,"^ that he had been generally regarded as a 
time-server; and Paterculus speaks of him as "behaving with 
that wavering honour which was characteristic of him.'"^^ But 
as he was at the head of an important province and a considera- 
ble army, Cicero tried to attach him to the cause of the common- 
wealth, and wrote to him a number of letters to this effect, which 
he answered with the fairest professions of his zeal in behalf of 
his country, but without declaring his sentiments with regard to 
Antonius. C. Asinius Pollio, whose name reminds 
us that we are arrived at the age of Yirgil and c-*^™'"^ 
Horace, was early distinguished as an orator,^ '^ and at the be- 
ginning of the civil war espoused the party of Caesar, because, ac- 
cording to his own account,"^ the power of some one of his per- 
sonal enemies in the camp of Pompey made him afraid to join 

lie Cicero, ad Familiares, VIII. epist. I. "4 H. 63. Plancus, dubia, id est, suA 

111 Cossar, de Bello Civili, I. and Auctor Fide. 

de Bello Africano. »5 Quintilian, XII. 6. 

112 Ca3sar, de Bello Civili, I. and Auctor "s Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. 
de Bello Africano. XXXI. 

113 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. III. 



384 ANTONIUS REJECTS THE SENATE'S PROPOSALS. 

the standard of the commonwealth. He served Cassar faithfully, 
and was left by him, as we have seen, in the command of the 
province of Farther Spain, after the defeat of Cngeus Pompeius at 
Munda. He had since been opposed to Sex. Pompeius, and had 
been defeated by him, as we have already mentioned. Yet he 
professed a great zeal for the liberties of his country, and a deter- 
mination to resist any person whatsoever who should again at- 
tempt to gain absolute sovereignty.^'''' He was at the head of an 
army of three legions ;^'^ and Antonius had endeavoured already 
to seduce one of these to his own service, nor had PoUio been able 
to retain it in its duty without difficulty. In fact, the dispositions 
of the soldiers in general were so adverse to the establishment of 
the old constitution, that when they understood the quarrel to be 
between Antonius and the cause of the senate and the people, 
they could not be prevailed upon to support the latter ; and it 
was this circumstance that insured the success of Octavius, when 
a few months afterwards he revealed his own treasonable inten- 
tions, and enslaved the senate whose authority he was now af- 
fecting to uphold. 

Meantime the deputation from the senate had proceeded to the 
Antonius rejects the camp of M. Antouius, Erc its members had reached 
ate. "^ so esen ^j-^e gjj(j of ^hcir joumcy,"^ Scr. Sulpiclus, the most 
distinguished of their number, died of an indisposition which had 
attacked him before he left Rome, and which had been aggravated 
by the fatigue of travelling, and by the anxiety which he felt for 
the success of his mission. His surviving colleagues, L. Philippus 
and L. Piso, were too nearly connected with the family of Csesar 
to be very zealous in the cause of the commonwealth. They 
presented the commands of the senate to Antonius, and consented 
to carry back to Rome a counter proposal on his part, '2" in which, 
far from complying with the orders which he had received, he 
agreed to give up Cisalpine Gaul only on condition of receiving 
in exchange the province of Transalpine Gaul for five years, '^' 
with an army of six legions, and that his brother should retain 
Macedonia as long as Brutus and Cassius should enjoy the com- 
mand of any provinces as consuls or proconsuls. Besides these 

li'' Si id agitur ut rursus in Potestate om- this place by mistaiie ; but it seems to us 

nia unius sint, quicunque is est, ei me pro- that some words have rather been omitted 

fiteor Inimicum. — Cicero, ad Familiares, in the preceding sentence, and that the 

X. epist. XXXI. clause, " tamdiuque ut obtineat, quamdiu 

118 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. M. Brutus, C. Cassius, Consules, prove 
XXXII. Coss. Provincias obtinebunt," refers to C. 

119 Cicero, Philippic. IX. 7. Antonius, and not, asSchtltz imagines, to 

120 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. IV. Marcus. M. Antonius throughout speaks 

121 Cicero, Philippic. VIII. 9. The te.xt of himself in the first person, and imniedi- 
towards the latter end of the ninth chapter ately after the stipulation in behalf of his 
of the eighth Philippic is evidently defec- brother, which we have just quoted, he 
tive. One senteuce relative to C. Anto- adds, " Ipse autem ut quinquennium ob- 
niua is marked by SchQtz as inserted in tineam." 



PROCEEDINGS OF BRUTUS AND CASSIUS. 355 

concessions, he demanded grants of lands for the soldiers who had 
followed him, a confirmation of all grants already made by him- 
self and Dolabella, and of all the decrees issued by them on the 
pretended authority of Caesar's papers ; and that his law relating 
to the judicial power should be maintained inviolate. When these 
proposals were reported to the senate, L. Caesar, ^^^ the uncle of 
Antonius, moved that the country should be declared in a state of 
disturbance ; and the whole people assume the military dress in 
token of the imminent danger which threatened the common- 
wealth. The spirit of all ranks, if we may believe Cicero, ^'^'^ was 
keenly alive to the necessity of putting down the rebellion of An- 
tonius ; with the exception only of those citizens who were of 
consular dignity, whom age or the honours and emoluments which 
they had gained in the last revolution, made unwilling to risk the 
chances of another. Besides, many of these persons had been so 
connected with the party of Caesar, that the revival of the old 
aristocratical interests, supported by the eloquence and integrity 
of Cicero, was to them a prospect full of apprehension. They 
served the cause of Antonius at present, by professing an extreme 
anxiety for peace ; but they hoped to espouse it more effectually, 
and to introduce divisions amongst the opposite party, so soon as 
they could find a handle to insinuate that whilst Caesar's friends 
were quarrelling with one another, the partisans of Pompey were 
watching for the moment in which they might once more estab- 
lish their own ascendency. 

Nor was the opportunity which they sought for backward in 
presenting itself. Brutus and Cassius had left Italy proceedings of Brutus 
in the preceding autumn, with the intention, we andcassius. 
may suppose, of strengthening themselves against the enmity of 
Antonius by the resources of the eastern provinces. The opposi- 
tion begun by Cicero in the senate on the second of September, 
and the subsequent state of terror under which the senate was 
said to be kept by the military force of Antonius, induced them, 
or furnished them with a pretext to act in a more decisive manner. 
Brutus at first had repaired to Athens,'^* and had remained there 
for some time, apparently engrossed with the philosophical studies 
of the place ; but during this interval his emissaries had been at 
work in Macedonia, endeavouring to conciliate to his interests the 
soldiers that were still quartered there ; and he was himself gain- 
ing partisans among that numerous body of young men of family or 
talent who were in the habit of resorting to Athens as the univer- 
sity of the ancient world. He was, however, principally enabled 
to declare himself openly in consequence of an important service 

122 Cicero, Philippic. VIII. I. his Philippics, Epist. ad Familiares, XII. 

123 Compare, besides his assertions in epist. IV. V. ; XL epist. VIII. ; X. epist. V. 

12* Plutarch, in Bruto, 24. 



386 SUCCESS OF BRUTUS IN GREECE. 

rendered him by M. Apuleius,^*^^ who had some time past filled 
the office of quaestor in the province of Asia. Apuleius happened 
to be returniiig to Rome with a large fleet, on board of which was 
a large sum of money belonging to the government, collected by 
him in his province for the benefit of the revenue of the common- 
wealth. Brutus met him on the coast of Euboea, and prevailed 
upon him to make over the whole of this treasure. He was thus 
in a condition immediately to raise an army, partly by inviting to 
his standard those soldiers who had formerly served under Pom- 
peyj'^' and who it seems were still numerous in Thessaly ; and 
partly by tampering with the troops belonging to P. Dolabella, 
which were at this time passing through Greece on their way 
towards Syria. It is particularly mentioned, that two divisions of 
Dolabella's cavalry were thus persuaded to desert their officers 
and join Brutus ;^'^'' and the same means were probably used 
with effect towards a legion commanded by one of the lieutenants 
of C. Antonius, which submitted itself to M. Cicero, Cicero's 
son, one of those young men whom Brutus had won to his inter- 
ests during his residence at Athens, Soon afterwards, Q,. Hor- 
tensius, the son of the famous orator of that name, who was at 
this time proconsul of Macedonia, put the whole resources of his 
province at the disposal of Brutus ; and he was thus become so 
formidable, that P. Vatinius, proconsul of Illyricum, and one of 
Cassar's oldest and most zealous partisans, finding himself unable 
to depend upon his soldiers, surrendered to him the important 
town of Dyrrhachium, and saw his troops immediately enter into 
the service of his enemy. In this manner Brutus made himself 
Brutus obtains pos- mastcr of thc provluccs of Achaia, Macedonia, and 

session of the pro- tii • i i ^i i jr 

vinces of Achaia, Illyricum. aud was become tlie general ot an army 
riSfi^."""'^"'^' ^' of seven legions \^^^ while C. Antonius, who had 
set out from Italy in the hope of entering upon the government of 
Macedonia, found that province now armed against him, and the 
troops which he expected to command adding themselves to the 
forces of his enemy. Thus disappointed, he threw himself into 
Apollonia with seven cohorts which still remained faithful to 
him ;'^' and being master of that city, and of one or two other 
places in the neighbourhood, he prepared to resist the attacks of 
Brutus. 

It is difficult, while relying upon Cicero's authority for almost 
Dolabella surprises the wholc of our accouuts of thcsc times, not to for- 
p^ovin^ceofAliaand get that this authority is not equally to be followed 

murders C.Treboni- • •- • n ^ p j ^- • •. 

us. m Its judgments of men and actions as in its re- 

125 Cicero, Philippic. X. 11 ; XIII. 16. 12T Cicero, Philippic. X. 6. Plutarch, 

Plutarch, in Bruto, 24. Appian, de Bello in Bruto, 25. 
Civili, IV. 75. Cicero, ad Familiares, 12S Velleius Paterculus, II. 65. 
XIII. epiat. XLV. iM Cicero, Philippic. X. 6 ; XI. 11. 

128 Plutarch, in Bruto, 25. 



DOLABELLA MURDERS C. TREBONIUS. 3g7 

ports of matters of fact. We catch insensibly the opinions of a 
writer whom we are continually consulting ; and we do not re- 
member that during all the transactions which we are now re- 
lating, he was the active leader of a party, and could not, there- 
fore, represent with impartiality the motives or the merits of the 
conduct of his opponents. This remark must apply particularly 
to those proceedings of Dolabella which we are now called to 
notice. He found that the assassins of Caesar were resolved to 
consider as illegal all the acts of his colleague M. Antonius and 
of himself in their late consulship. Decimus Brutus was main- 
taining Cisalpine Gaul against M. Antonius, in defiance of the 
decree of the people ; M. Brutus was occupying Macedonia, which 
had been equally given by the people to C. Antonius ; and C. 
Cassius was proceeding towards Syria to take away that prov- 
ince in a similar manner from Dolabella himself Already, as we 
have seen, Dolabella's cavalry had been seduced from his service, 
and had joined the army of Brutus ; so that under these circum- 
stances, whilst his enemies, by their own sole authority, were 
converting to their own use the resources of the empire, he might 
think himself justified in following their example, and in depriv- 
ing their officers of their provinces, as he himself and his friends 
had been deprived of those held by themselves. "With this view 
he formed the design of securing the province of Asia, which was 
now held by C. Trebonius. But in the execution of this purpose 
he is charged with acts of the greatest perfidy and cruelty ; he is 
said to have entered the province of C. Trebonius as if he were 
merely passing through it on his way to Syria :'^° he had an in- 
terview with Trebonius, in which he professed the most friendly 
dispositions towards him ; and having thus lulled him into a fatal 
security, he made a sudden assault by night upon the city of 
Smyrna, in which Trebonius then was, and thus obtained pos- 
session of his person. Trebonius thus treacherously seized, was 
immediately put to the torture to draw from him some informa- 
tion as to the treasure of the province ; and after he had suflered 
these cruelties for two days, he was beheaded with circumstances 
of additional barbarity ; his head was carried about on the point 
of a spear, and his body was exposed to the insults of Dolabella's 
soldiers, and finally cast into the sea. After this murder, Dola- 
bella enriched himself by seizing some of the public money in the 
province, and by the plunder of a great number of individuals ;'^^ 
but not having a sufficient force to enable him at once to main- 
tain Asia, and to prosecute his march towards Syria, he aban- 
doned the prize which he had gained, and continued his progress 
towards the east. But receiving alarming accounts of the force 

13" Cicero, Philippic. XI. 2, 3. Livy, '^^ Ciceso, ad Faifliliares. XII. epist. 
Epitome, CXIX. XV. 



388 DOLABELLA KILLS HIMSELF. 

under C. Cassins, and thinking it probable that Syria would be 
effectually barred against him, he prepared a large fleet of trans- 
ports in the ports of Lycia, on board of which he intended, in 
case of need, to embark his troops and his treasures, and return to 
join Antonius in Italy, This scheme was defeated by the activity 
of P. Lentulus Spinther, the son of that Lentulus who had been 
consul in the year 696, and to whom Cicero was largely indebted 
for his recall from banishment. The younger P. Lentulus had 
been quagstor under Trebonius in Asia, and had first retired into 
Macedonia after the murder of the proconsul ;'^^ but finding that 
Dolabella did not retain possession of Asia, lie returned thither, 
and having re-organized the administration of that province, he 
hastened to Rhodes with the fleet under his command, in order 
to procure assistance from the government of that island to enable 
him to attack the fleet of Dolabella in Lycia. The Rhodians, 
however, had suffered too severely under the dominion of the old 
aristocracy at Rome to be inclined to support its defenders. They 
had refused to receive Pompey himself within their walls, when 
he was a fugitive after the battle of Pharsalia ; and a squadron of 
their ships had joined Caesar at that period, and had distinguished 
itself most highly in his service during the contest in which he 
was involved in Egypt. But P. Lentulus, even without their aid, 
was strong enough to effect his purpose ; the ships of war belong- 
ing to Dolabella fled from Lycia, and either dispersed and aban- 
doned his cause, or retreated to Cyprus and Syria, while the 
transports thus left to themselves were immediately secured by 
Doiab^ua is shut out Leiitulus. Dolabella arriving in Syria with a force 
from Syria by caesms. whlch was probably uot vcry considerable, found 
the gates of Antioch closed against him,'^^and having in vain en- 
deavoured to force an entrance, he fled in disorder to Laodicea. 
He is besieged in In this distrcsscd State of his fortimes, his soldiers 

Laodicea, and kills , .1 , ■• ■ ii x" j \ • \r -i. 

himself. began to desert hmi, and he soon lound hmiseli be- 

sieged by C. Cassius, who had gained full possession of the prov- 
ince of Syria, and now commanded an army of ten legions. 
Laodicea was blockaded by land and sea, till Dolabella, hopeless 
of relief, and dreading the fate which he had inflicted on Trebo- 
nius, ended his life by suicide. ^^^ This event took place in the 
summer of 710, and the tidings of it reached the capital, and 
cheered the aristocratical party with a moment's exultation im- 
mediately before their complete and final overthrow. 

The army with which Cassius had obtained this great suc- 
Account of the pro ccss, had bccu collectcd by him from various quar- 

eeedings of Cassius in ' . i • z- x j ^ r t.l i • *! 

Syria. tcrs, suicc lus first departure irom Italy ni the au- 

tumn of the preceding year. He had first visited Trebonius in 

132 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. ^^* Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. Livy, 
XIV. XV. Epitome, 121. 

133 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. 
XIII. XIV. XV. 



CASSIUS IN SYRIA. 339 

the province of Asia/^^ and was liberally supplied with money 
by his qusestor, P. Lentulus, who also claimed the merit of winning 
over to his interest a large body of cavalry forming part of Dola- 
bella's army, which had been sent on by him from Macedonia, 
to precede his march into Syria. Some forces were also raised in 
the province itself; and Cassius, thus provided with men and 
money, did not hesitate to proceed to Syria without delay, while 
Dolabella was still lingering in Europe. He reached Syria in 
the depth of the winter, perhaps about the end of January or be- 
ginning of February, when the ascendency of the aristocratical 
party in Rome, and the measures taken against Antonius, were 
already known in the east. There was at this time in Syria an 
army, according to Appian, of six legions,!^^ under the command 
of L. Statius Murcus, and Q,. Marcius Crispus, which had been 
committed to them by Csesar for the purpose of reducing Q-. Cse- 
cilius BassuS; and the legion with which he maintained himself 
in Apamea. Both of these officers had served under Csesar in the 
civil war, but they were men of little ambition, and were disposed 
to obey any authority which might seem entitled to command 
them. Accordingly, they gave up their legions to Cassius with- 
out hesitation, '3'' believing that by so doing, they should most con- 
sult the wishes of the government at Rome ; and this example 
was presently followed by the legion under Q,. Bassus ; for al- 
though that officer himself was sufficiently desirous of retaining 
his command, yet his soldiers looked upon Cassius as so much 
more respectable a leader, that he was unable to prevent them 
from making him an offer of their services. Soon afterwards, A. 
Allienus, who had been employed by Dolabella to lead from 
Egypt four legions which had been mostly left there by Csesar to 
secure the throne of Cleopatra, meeting Cassius in Syria, and 
being neither wilHng nor able to resist him, surrendered to him 
the whole force which he commanded. With regard to foreign 
states, it may be mentioned that the inhabitants of Syria in gene- 
raV^^ and particularly the people of Tyre, as also Caesar's old 
enemy, Deiotarus, king of Galatia, were inclined to support Cas- 
sius ; while on the other hand, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, the 
Rhodians, the Lycians, the people of Tarsus, ^'^ and the Jews, 
were the enemies of the old aristocracy, and devoted to any one 
who should profess himself the representative of the party of 
Caesar. The Jews, however, being placed in the midst of the 
forces of Cassius, were soon obliged to submit to him ; and he 
proceeded soon afterwards to attack the Rhodians, whose emi- 
nence as a naval power made their opposition more formidable. 

135 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. i3s Cicero, Philippic. XI. 13, 14. 
XIV. Dion Cassius, XLVIT. 342. "s Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist, 

'38 De Bello Civili, IV. 58. XIII. Dion Cassius, XL VII. 343. 

137 Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. 
XI. XII. 



390 VOTE OP THE SENATE IN FAVOUR OF BRUTUS. 

We have thus carried on our narrative of the state of affairs 
vote of the senate in 1" the cast to a period souie months later than that 
favour of Brutus. ^^ which we had arrived, ni describmg tlie course of 
events at Rome and in Italy. When M. Brutus had made himself 
master of Macedonia and Achaia, he sent despatches to the senate 
containing an account of his successes.'^" After they had been 
read, Q,. Fufius Calenus proposed that they should he acknow- 
ledged by an answer of mere compliment, and that Brutus at the 
same time should be ordered to give up the legions, the command 
of which he had gained so irregularly. But Cicero, rejoicing to 
see a powerful army in the hands of a general on whom he could 
so fully rely, moved on the contrary, " that the senate highly ap- 
proved of the conduct of Brutus, and that it confirmed to him in 
the fullest manner the possession • of the armies and provinces 
which he had acquired, requesting him at the same time to remain, 
widi his forces as much as possible in the neighbourhood of Italy, 
that he might be ready to lend his assistance to the commonwealth 
if necessary." This motion, it appears, was carried, and excited 
probably no small jealousy amongst the partisans of Ca3sar. Soon 
afterwards, tidings arrived of the murder of Trebonius, and the 
seizure of the province of Asia by Dolabella. The cruelty which 
had accompanied this action excited a general feeling of indigna- 
Doiabeiia declared a tlou. d. Caleuus,"^ wlth a fiaukuess highly crcdl- 
L"n"te.'"""""'''' table to him, being first asked his opinion by his 
son-in-law, C. Pansa, moved that Dolabella should be declared a 
public enemy, and that his property should be confiscated ; adding, 
that if any senator should propose a decree of greater severity, he 
would gladly assent to it. But the unanimity which had been 
thus happily produced by the cruelty of Dolabella, was soon dis- 
turbed. It was next to be considered to whom the commonwealth 
should intrust the duty of revenging the death of Trebonius, and 
prosecuting the war against Dolabella. L. Caesar,^^^ ^yj^Q j^^^d 
been consul twenty-one years before, in the year preceding the 
conspiracy of Catiline, the uncle of M. Antonius, but who had 
always firmly and honestly opposed his ambitious and violent 
measures, proposed that P. Servilius Isauricus should be the person 
selected. Servilius had been Caesar's colleague in the consulship 
in the year 705 ; but even then he had supported the aristocratical 
interests with vigour against the mischievous laws of M. Caslius. 
He had since been himself proconsul of Asia, and had borne the 
character of a moderate and humane magistrate,'^' so that his 
appointment seems to have been most luiexceptionable, and \yas 
likely to have answered Cicero's purposes sufficiently in putting 

1*0 Cicero, Philippic. X. passim. '" Cicero, Philippic. XL 8 ; Epist. ad 

"I Cicero, Philippic. XI. 6. Familiares, XII. epist. V. 

'4» Cicero, ad Familiares, XIII. epist. 
LXVI. LXVIII. 



CICERO'S PRECIPITANCY IN BEHALF OF THE CONSPIRATORS. 391 

down Dolabella, without giving offence to the partisans of Csesar. 
Another proposal advised that the war should be committed to 
the two consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, who were to be appointed to 
the command of the two provinces of Asia and Syria. By this 
method it was artfully intended to allure the two consuls from 
Italy by the prospect of an honourable command in the most 
lucrative stations in the empire ; to leave Octavius by their depar- 
ture at the head of the troops opposed to Antonius, and above all 
to stop the progress of Cassius, who was suspected of seizing 
Syria by his own authority. Nothing seemed so likely to disap- 
point this scheme as the proposal of L. Caesar, which, if supported 
by the aristocratical party, would probably have been carried. 
But Cicero most injudiciously opposed the nomination of Servilius, 
as well as that of the consuls, and moved " that the war with 
Dolabella, together with the province of Syria, and all the troops 
in that part of the empire, should be intrusted to C. Cassius ; that 
for the prosecution of the war he should be invested with an ab- 
solute control over the fleets and revenues of the east ; that his 
command should e'xtend to the provinces of Asia, Pontus, and 
Bithynia, as well as to Syria ; and that into whatsoever province 
he should enter in the course of his hostihties against Dolabella, 
his authority in that province should immediately supersede that 
of the regular oflicers of the commonwealth." Even the very 
mother and brother of Cassius,"* who were at that time in Rome,^ 
remonstrated with Cicero upon the gross impolicy of such a pro- 
posal. When Brutus had so lately been confirmed in the com- 
mand of three provinces, and an army of seven legions, how was 
it to be expected that even moderate men, and much less that the 
partisans of Caesar, should consent to invest another of the con- 
spirators with powers and resources still more ample ? The only 
effect of Cicero's motion was to render him an object of increased 
suspicion to all the friends of Caesar's government, and to procure 
the triumph of that party who wished to give the command of the 
war with Dolabella to the consuls Hirtius and Pansa. The war against do 
It is true that they did not live long enough to avail the^wo'?orS. 
themselves of the vote of the senate in their favour ; and Cassius, 
as we have seen, soon afterwards destroyed Dolabella by his own 
authority. But Cicero, by thus showing himself so intemperate a 
partisan of the assassins of Caesar, and of those two in particular 
who had even during the civil war been among the adherents of 
Pompey, gave a general disgust to that numerous portion of the 
commonwealth who wished to see Caesar's system and measures 
preserved under certain limitations, and who dreaded and abhorred 
the exclusive dominion of the high aristocratical party. 

The proceedings of Antonius, however, during his consulship 

"* Cicero, ad Farailiares, XII. epist. VII. 

26 



392 .VOTE OP THE SENATE AGAINST ANTONIUS. 

Vote of the senate ^^^ been SO violent, that the majority of the sen- 
againet Aritonius. ^|^g weie disposed to pass the strongest decrees 
agahist him iiidividiiallj^, however unwilling they might be to 
concur in the excessive powers and honours proposed by Cicero 
for the assassins of Caesar. It was resolved that the laws passed 
by Antonius were not binding ;'^^ that he had forged decrees of 
the senate ; and that he had corruptly appropriated to himself 
above five millions sterling of the public money. By these reso- 
lutions the senate seemed to declare that their quarrel with him 
was perpetual ; and although they were so far moved by L. Piso 
and Q,. Calenus as to vote that another deputation should be sent 
to him, in the expectation that he would submit implicitly to their 
orders, yet when they found that this expectation was not likely 
to be realized, the measure was dropped altogether. Nay, when 
letters were received from M. Lepidus,^^® urging them to put an 
end to the civil war, they voted according to the sentiments of P. 
Servilius, who moved, that peace with Antonius was prejudicial 
to the commonwealth. It was about this time also, that is, the 
beginning of April, that M. Varisidius arrived at Rome,'^'' being 
the bearer of a letter addressed by L. Plancus to the senate. In 
this letter Plancus asserted that he had an army of five legions 
under his command ; and that both himself, his soldiers, and the 
people of his province of Gaul, were entirely devoted to the in- 
terests of his country, and ready to undertake any service to 
which the commonwealth might think proper to call them. 
There was an ambiguity in the terms " country" and " common- 
wealth," of which Plancus possibly designed hereafter to avail 
himself; yet the tone of his letter was so promising, and his lan- 
guage in a private letter to Cicero was so strongly in favour of 
his attachment to the course now pursued by the senate, that Ci- 
cero thought proper to move for a grant of extraordinary honours 
to him, in recompense of his fidelity. This motion was opposed 
by P. Servilius ; and when the majority of the senate agreed to it, 
P. Titius, one of the tribunes, interposed his negative at the request 
of Servilius, and thus stopped the decree. The debate was ad- 
journed to the following day, the ninth of April, when Cicero spoke 
with great vehemence against Servilius and Titius ; and at last, 
partly from the effect of his own eloquence, and partly owing to the 
impression pioduced by the arrival of despatches from P. Lentu- 
lus in Asia,'^^ containing an account of the progress of Cassius 

W5 Cicero, Philippic. XII. 5. often questioned ; and SchOtz has classed 

146 Cicero, Philippic. XIII. 4, et seq. them, together with five orations common- 

"7 Cicero,adFarailiares, X. epist. VIII. ly ascribed to Cicero, among the works 

XII. which he believes to be forgeries ; and has 

"8 Cicero, ad Brutum, II. epist. II. We published them in a separate volume. — 

are aware that the genuineness of the two But judging from the arguments which he 

books of " Epistles to Brutus" has been brings to prove their spuriousness, the gen- 



VOTE OF HONOURS TO L. PLANCUS. 



393 



m Syria ; the opinion of Cicero triumphed, the tribune withdrew 
his negative, and the vote of honours to L. Plancus was carried. 
But the subsequent conduct of Plancus seems to indicate that 
with regard to him, as well as to Octavius, Cicero either believed 
or pretended to believe their professions much too readily ; and 
by his lavish votes in their favour injured, in fact, the dignity of 
the commonwealth, and gave to the contest the appearance of a 
personal quarrel with Antonius, rather than of a general opposi- 
tion to the principle of usurped and illegal power and military 
tyranny. 



wineness of a work was never more unrea- 
sonably suspected. He says, that the letter 
which we have just quoted (IL epist. II.) 
must be a forgery, because it spealis of the 
arrival of tidings concerning Cassius on 
the 9th of April ; whereas in another 
letter to Brutus, dated on the 5th of May, 
the writer says that nothing was known of 
the forces of Cassius. But on attending 
to the whole passages in both letters, the 
inconsistency vanishes. Despatches had 
reached Rome, on the 9th of April, from 
P. Lentulus, who had been quaestor to 
Trebonius, and who appears to have writ- 
ten them from the province of Asia. They 
contained a report of the information which 
he had received from Syria, of the occu- 
pation of that province by Cassius, and of 
the surrender of the legions under L. Mur- 
cus and Q,. Crispus. It is not said that 
the despatches of Lentulus entered into 
any particulars ; but they probably stated 
in general terms, as was natural, what he 
had heard of events which had occurred 
in a distant province. Nearly a month af- 
terwards, Cicero informs Brutus that the 
senate had given him a discretionary pow- 
er to act against Dolabella or not, as he 
should judge most expedient ; and adds, 
as the reason why so much was thus left 
to his own judgment, that nothing was 
known about the army of Cassius ; nothing, 
that is, as to its position, its operations, or 
even its means of taking the field. It 
was known that Cassius had an army and 
a province ; but this knowledge was of no 
use towards deciding the question, whether 
he might require the aid of Brutus in de- 
stroying Dolabella or no ; and therefore, 
as far as that point was concerned, it was 
equivalent to a " total ignorance about the 
army of Cassius." 

We have quoted the " Epistles to Bru- 
tus" without hesitation J for we think that 
all the positive arguments of inconsisten- 
cy with themselves or with other authori- 
Ues, which SchUtz has repeated from Tun- 



stall, are founded on mistakes and misin- 
terpretations of the passages attacked. — 
Another class of arguments, if they deserve 
to be called so, is built on the pretended 
occurrence of unclassical or inelegant ex- 
pressions in these letters ; and sometimes 
a letter is condemned because "totaejus 
compositio prorsus a Ciceronis elegantia 
abhorret." SchQtz, Praefat. in torn. VIII. 
p. 3. Ciceron. Oper. It must be a very 
strong case indeed that could warrant us 
in pronouncing a work to be a forgery, on 
account of fancied inelegancies in its style, 
or even of dissimilarity from the usual 
language of the writer. But in the pres- 
ent instance we see no such dissimilarity ; 
and as for the inelegance of particular ex- 
pressions, we do think that it is quite ab- 
surd to pretend to decide, in a dead lan- 
guage, what expressions might or might 
not have been used in the familiarity of a 
private letter. 

The evidence in favour of the " Epistles 
to Brutus" is the same on which we be- 
lieve the genuineness of any ancient wri- 
ting ; namely, that they have been trans- 
mitted down to us amongst the other 
works of Cicero, and profess to be his 
composition. If the arguments brought 
against them be of no weight, if there be, 
as we think there is not, no evidence to 
render them suspected, we may receive 
them as genuine on the external evidence 
of their having been always ascribed to 
Cicero, without inquiring whether they 
afford any positive internal evidence in 
their own favour. But we think that they 
possess also this mark of genuineness, and 
that they are such letters as no man was 
likely to have forged, from the brevity and 
uninteresting nature of many of the num- 
bers ; and from their real, but neither ap- 
parent nor designed, agreement with what 
we know from other really respectable au- 
thorities concerning the facts to which they 
allude. 



394 LETTER OF ANTONIUS TO HIRTIUS AND OCTAVIUS. 

While the aristocratical party was thus triumphing in the 
Letter Of Antonius to faucled suppoit of PlaDcus, Antoiiius was endeav- 
Hirtiusandocta^s. ouiing to seduce the officers who were employed 
against him, A. Hirtius and C. Octavius. He addressed to them 
a letter/" in which he represented the impolicy of their conduct 
in serving the purposes of the Pompeian party, and fighting against 
their old comrades and natural associates, in behalf of men by 
whom they were hated in reality as bitterly as he himself And 
he spoke of Lepidus and Plancus as being united with him in all 
his designs, and approving his proceedings. This letter was 
transmitted by Hirtius to Cicero, and was by him read aloud in 
the senate. To Octavius, doubtless, it suggested nothing which 
he had not himself clearly perceived before. It was not, and 
could not be his real intention to exalt the cause of Pompey, or 
to see the assassins of his uncle in possession of the greatest power 
and dignity in the commonwealth. Nor^ ought the enemies of 
Antonius to have neglected that part of his letter in which he 
boasted of the entire co-operation of Lepidus and Plancus. With 
regard to Lepidus, the whole course of his former life, as well as 
his recent interference to procure peace for Antonius, rendered 
the assertion extremely probable ; and if Lepidus deserted the 
cause of the commonwealth, the fidelity of Plancus would be 
exposed to a very severe temptation. On the other hand, the 
consuls Hirtius and Pansa, the latter of whom had now taken 
the field with the army which he had been levying and organiz- 
ing at Rome, possessed and deserved the entire confidence of the 
senate ;. and whilst the greatest part of the forces employed 
against Antonius was in their hands, Octavius must of necessity 
remain faithful, and the contest might be decided before Lepidus 
or Plancus should venture to throw aside the mask which they 
now thought it prudent to wear. 

Meantime the events of the campaign were becoming of the 
Battle of Mutina. highcst importaucc. In the month of February, 
v.c.m. Antonius, while closely besieging Decimus Brutus 

in Mutina, was in possession of the important places of Parma, 
Regium Lepidi or Reggio, and Bononia or Bologna. These three 
towns were all situated on the jEmilian way, at that time proba- 
bly the only good line of communication by which it was possi- 
ble to reach Mutina ; and lying two to the westward and one to 
the eastward of the place that was besieged, the occupation 
of them by the besieging army rendered it difficult for Hirtius 
and Octavius to advance to its relief. The season, besides, 
was unfavourable, and C. Pansa was still busied in levy- 
ing troops at Rome ; so that Hirtius and Octavius remained 
quiet fof some time ; the former at Claterna,*^'' and the latter 
at Forum Cornelii, or Imola ; both of which towns were situated 

"9 Cicero, Philippic. XIII. 10, et seq. 'so Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. V. 



ANTONIUS IS DEFEATED. 395 

on the ^milian way, between Bononia and Ariminum. But as 
the spring came on, and Decimus Brutus began to suffer severely 
from the strictness of the blockade, Hirtius and Octavius deemed 
it necessary to act more vigorously. They advanced towards 
Mutina, and Antonius thought proper to abandon Bononia to 
them, so that they were enabled to approach very near to the 
lines of the besiegers ; and iti this situation they were endeavour- 
ing to open a communication with Decimus Brutus, and were 
waiting at the same time for the arrival of Pansa with his newly 
raised legions from Rome. It was about the middle of April, ^^^ 
when Hirtius was informed that Pansa was approaching at 
the head of four legions of newly-raised troops ; and in order to 
favour his safe arrival, which Antonius would naturally endea- 
vour to prevent, he despatched the praetorian cohorts of himself 
and Octavius, together with one of his legions, by night to join 
him, and strengthen him on his march. It happened that this 
was the Martian legion, which had first set the example of de- 
sertion from Antonius, and which was animated by the fiercest 
animosity against him. Antonius, not aware of the reinforce- 
ment which Pansa had thus received, marched with two of his 
veteran legions, and some of Csesar's disbanded soldiers, whom 
he had assembled under his standard at the beginning of the cam- 
paign, to intercept him on his way. But on the first appearance 
of his light troops and cavalry, the Martian legion, unable to re- 
strain its impetuosity, advanced hastily forward, and followed by 
the two praetorian cohorts, engaged with the enemy before it could 
be supported by the newly-raised legions, which were at some 
distance in the rear. It was in consequence overpowered and de- 
feated with severe loss ;'" Pansa, who had taken the command 
of it in person, after having vainly endeavoured to check its im- 
prudent advance, was dangerously wounded, and carried off to 
Bononia ; and Antonius following up his advantage, attempted to 
take the camp of the enemy. Here, however, he was repulsed 
by two of Pansa's newly-raised legions, and finding that he could 
do nothing further on that side, he commenced his retreat towards 
his own camp before Mutina. But Hirtius, who had received in- 
telligence of Pansa's danger, had set out with two legions to his 
rescue, leaving Octavius to defend their camp ; and although he 
could not arrive in time to prevent the defeat of the Martian le- 
gion, yet he fell in with Antonius when retreating towards Mutina 
after his victory, and assaulting his soldiers, fatigued as they 
were by their preceding exertions, he totally routed and dispersed 
them. Antonius reached his lines in safety at the head of his 
cavalry, a kind of force with which Hirtius was unprovided, and 

'' 151 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. i52 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. 
XXX. XXX. ; Philippic. XIV. 9, 10. 14. 



396 ANTONIUS RETREATS TOWARDS GAUL. 

found that the troops whom he had left there in the morning, had 
made an attack upon the enemy's camp dming the absence of 
Hirtius, but had been repulsed with loss by the forces left with Oc- 
taviiis to guard it. 

By this action the army of Antonius was greatly weakened. 
Defeat of Antonius. but as it yct retained its lines around Mutina, the 
?ons'uis°^ ""' '''" relief of Decimus Brutus had not- been effected by 
the success of his associates, Hirtius and Octavius, therefore, 
were anxious to bring Antonius to a second action ; and this they 
accomplished by threatening to force their way into Mutina at a 
distant and ill-guarded quarter of his lines. Antonius was forced 
to fight in order to oppose this attempt ; but he was again de- 
feated with great loss ; and Decimus Brutus making a sally at 
the same time with the garrison of Mutina, he had no other re- 
source but to abandon all his positions, and fly with the wreck 
of his infantry, covered by his still unbroken cavalr)'', in the di- 
rection of the Alps.'^^ Unfortunately for the cause of the aris- 
tocracy, Hirtius, while pursuing the enemy into their lines, had 
fallen, and the command of his army devolved thus suddenly 
upon Octavius. This circumstance deprived Decimus Brutus 
for the moment of any co-operation. Octavius drew back his 
troops into his own camp, and Brutus, not aware of the death 
of Hirtius,'^'* waited in expectation of receiving some communi- 
cation from him. When he learned that Octavius was now 
the sole general of the army of the commonwealth, he Avished 
to ascertain his sentiments before he ventured freely to act 
with him ; and having requested and obtained an interview 
with him, although Octavius removed all suspicion by the lan- 
guage which he held, yet it was too late in the day, after this 
meeting, to take any active steps in pursuing Antonius. On the 
following morning Decimus Brutus was summoned to Bononia 
to see Pansa, who was lying there ill of his wounds ; but on his 
way thither he received intelligence of the consul's death, and re- 
turned immediately to Mutina, having lost irreparably another 
day. Meantime Antonius was retreating with the utmost rapidi- 
ty, marching in no regular order, and swelling his numbers by 
opening all the workhouses, and enlisting the slaves who were kept 
there under their taskmasters.^'^ His object was to enter Gaul 
as soon as possible by way of the Maritime Alps ; and accord- 
Antonius retreats to- ingly lic allowcd liimsclf uo rcspito till he had 
j^S^edbyvLntidius!' crossod tlic Apeuniues and arrived at Vada,'^« a 
spot which still retains the name of Vado, and is situated on the 
road from Genoa to Nice, a little to the westward ot Savona. 
Here he received a most seasonable support in the junction of P. 

153 Cicero, ad Brntum, I. eplst. IV. iss Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. X. 

^* Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. XIII. 
XIII. 156 Strabo, IV. 221, edit. Xyland. 



MOVEMENTS OF PLANCUS AND D. BRUTUS. 397 

Ventidins with three legions. This officer was a native of Ascu- 
lum, and when that town had been taken by Cn. Pompeius Strabo 
in the ItaHan war, Ventidius, then quite a boj^, had walked amongst 
the other prisoners in the triumphal procession of the conqueror. 
Since that time he had risen to considerable eminence, and had 
probably become acquainted with Antonius while they both 
served under Caesar. When the civil war was again begun by 
the siege of Mutina, and Italy seemed likely to be the scene of a 
bloody contest, as in the times of Marius and Sylla, Yentidius re- 
paired to his native country, Picenum, and there began to raise 
soldiers, partly from among Csesar's veterans, and partly from the 
inhabitants. He had collected a force of three legions, and was 
apparently still in Picenum, or its neighbourhood,'" when he re- 
ceived intelligence of the defeat of Antonius, Without loss of time 
he set out to join him, and as Octavius took no pains to intercept 
him, he crossed the Apennines by roads scarcely practicable, and 
succeeded in his attempt. Their cavalry was exceedingly for- 
midable,'^^ and L. Antonius was sent forwards with it to occupy 
the passes of the Alps, on the coast road from Vada to Forum 
Julii, or Frejus. Antonius himself arrived at Forum Julii on the 
fifteenth of May, '5' with the first divisions of his infantry ; Ventid- 
ius following at the distance of two days' march in the rear. They 
found that M. Lepidus had arrived with his army at Forum Vo- 
contii, a place distant little more than twenty miles Lepidus pretends to 
from them ; and whatever private reasons Antonius °^^°^'^ ^'= passage. 
might have had for depending on his assistance, yet his avowed 
object was to prevent the fugitive army from entering his province, 
and he had called upon L. Plancus to co-operate with him for that 
end. Plancus, as we have seen, had been rewarded with thanks 
and honours by the senate, on the motion of Cicero, in return for the 
assurances of patriotism which he had sent to Rome from his 
province in the month of March. He crossed the Rhone, near 
Lyons and Vienne, on the 'twenty-sixth of April, '^o with the inten- 
tion, as he declared, of marching into Italy to the relief of Deci- 
mus Brutus ; but receiving intelligence of the battles of Mutina a 
few days afterwards, he halted between the Rhone and the Isere, 
and began to communicate with Lepidus on the lest means of 
serving the commonwealth. 

The chief agent in this correspondence was M. Juventius La- 
terensis, who was at this time one of the lieutenants Movements of pian- 
of Lepidus ; but, unlike his general, had been Brutus^'"' Decimus 
through Hfe, and still continued to be, a fearless and sincere sup- 
porter of the old constitution."' Laterensis, believing what he 

157 Cicero, Philippic. XII. 9. I60 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. IX. 

^* Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. i^i Laterensis had abandoned his can- 

XV. XXXIII. XXXIV. vass for the tribuneiship in the year 694, 

'59 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. because all candidates for any magistracy 

XVII. were required to take an oath that they 



398 DELAY OF DECIMUS BRUTUS. 

wished, assured Plancus of the good intentions of Lepidus, and 
earnestly entreated him to move to his assistance against Anto- 
nius. It Avas on the twelfth of May that Plancus had thrown a 
bridge over the Isere, and had crossed the river ; but he had re- 
mained on the left bank for nine days, being inclined, he said, to 
wait there for the arrival of Decimus Brutus, on whose co-opera- 
tion he could more safely rely than on that of Lepidus. But being 
urged by the repeated entreaties and assurances of Lepidus and 
Laterensis, he moved forward from the Isere with four legions 
on the twenty-first of May,'^^ having built and garrisoned two 
towers at the two extremities of his bridge, in order to secure the 
passage for Decimus Brutus, if he should arrive from Italy to join 
him. Three days only after he left the Isere Decimus Brutus was 
at Eporedia, or Ivrea,^^^ in the direct road from the plains of the Po 
to the passage over the Alps by the Little St. Bernard, by which, 
retracing Hannibal's footsteps, he would have descended into the 
plains of Dauphin e by Montmeillan, and the road to Vienne. 
Brutus had under his command an army of seven legions, '^^ con- 
sisting of the legions raised by Pansa, those which he had levied 
himself, and one legion of veterans ; but having been delayed at 
first in pursuing Antonius after the battle of Mutina, having lost 
the co-operation of Octavius, and being unprovided with the 
means of adequately supplying his army, he was probably an 
unequal match for the united forces of Antonius and Ventidius, and 
therefore was obliged to rest his dependence on the assistance of 
Plancus. But when he had reached Eporedia, he was induced 
to suspend his march by the alarming reports which he received 
of the dispositions of Octavius and his veterans, *^^ reports which 
made him unwilling to leave Italy, and to abandon the seat of 
government to the ambition of one who was far more dangerous 
than Antonius. Meanwhile Plancus moved forwards from the 
Isere to join the army of Lepidus ;'" but by this time the soldiers 
of Antonius were in communication with those of Lepidus, and 
these last had openly told their general that they were determined 
to have peace, and would fight with none of their fellow-soldiers, 
M. Laterensis, perceiving that Lepidus took no steps to check 
these feelings in his soldiers, wrote to Plancus to warn him that 
he should advance no further ; and Plancus accordingly halted 

would never propose to the people any al- '^2 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. cpist. 

teration in Caesar's agrarian law, relative XVIIl. 

to a division of lands in Campania. Cice- '^3 Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. XX- 

ro.ad Atticum, II. epist. XVIII. And he ^^* Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. 

had afterwards loudly taxed Cicero with a XXIV. : XI. epist. X. 

disgraceful tergiversation, when he allowed ^^^ Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. XX. 

himself to court the friendship of Pompey '^^ Cicero,ad Familiares,X epist. XXI« 

and Cassar in opposition to the senate after XXIII. 

his return from exile. Cicero, pro Plancio, 

.38, 39. 



PROCEEDINGS AT ROME. 399 

within forty miles of Forum Julii to wait the event. On the 
twenty-nintii of May, Lepidus united his forces union between An- 
with those of Antonius, and the two generals in- tonius and Lepidus. 
stantly began to march in pursuit of Plancus. He fell back upon 
the Isere as they advanced, recrossed the river without suffering 
any annoyance, and having broken down his bridge, resolved 
again, according to his own account, to look forward to the arrival 
of Deciraus Brutus. But it may be suspected that Antonius and 
Lepidus would have pursued him more vigorously, had they ap- 
prehended any serious effects from his hostility ; and the inde- 
cision of Plancus may have joined with the treach- 

r T -J • ^ • T i. 'iiij. I. Suicide of Laterensis. 

ery 01 Lepidus m provoking Laterensis to that act 

of despair by which, when he saw the junction with Antonius 

consummated, he fell upon his own word. 

It is now time to return to Rome, and to notice the effect 
produced in the capital by the tidings of the battle of Mutina. 
When it was known that the siege of Mutina was raised, and 
that Antonius was flying in disorder with the 
wreck of his army, the expressions, and probably ^^"^^^ '"^^^* °^^' 
the feelings of public joy, were great and general.'^'' The peo- 
ple, as if all danger were at an end, laid aside the military 
dress: a triumph was voted to Decimus Brutus, '^^ an ovation 
to Octavius, and a public funeral in the Campus Martius to the 
two consuls, Hirtius and Pansa. Antonius and all his follow- 
ers were declared public enemies ; and as the death of the con- 
suls left vacant the charge of conducting the war against Dola- 
bella, P. Servilius moved that it should be now conferred on Cas- 
sius ; and it was added, on the suggestion of Cicero, that M. 
Brutus might take part in it or not, as he should judge most ex- 
pedient for the commonwealth. The first check which his exul- 
tation sustained was from the tidings of the unmolested retreat of 
Antonius, and of his junction with P. Ventidius ; and the public 
complained loudly of the neglect of Decimus Brutus and Octavius 
in suffering their defeated enemy to escape. Decimus Brutus, 
however, had so deep an interest in the success of the aristocracy, 
that he cannot be suspected of any want of vigour in their cause ; 
and his own justification, which he sent to Cicero in one of his 
letters, appears entirely satisfactory. ^^^ We have already men- 

16'? Cicero, ad Brutum, I. epist. III. — might be allowed to furnish every thing 

There is a story told by Valerius Maxi- that was required, even to the labour of 

mus, V. 2, which seems to confirm the their slaves, without receiving any sort of 

statement of Cicero, that the war with payment, because they considered the two 

Antonius was regarded by the people in consuls to have fallen in the service of their 

general as a struggle for their liberty. — country. 

When M. Comutus, the preetor, was pro- i^s Velleius Paterculus, II. 62, edit, 

ceeding to contract for the funeral solemni- Oxon 1693. Cicero, ad Brutum, I. epist. 

ties of Hirtius and Pansa, the principal V. XV. 

undertakers in Rome begged that they i69 Ad Familiares, XL epist. XIII. 



400 CONDUCT OF OCTAVIUS. 

tioned the circumstances which detained him two days from the 
pursuit of Antonius immediately after the battle ; and it became 
then impossible for him to overtake the fugitives, who were 
making their way with the utmost expedition by tracts which 
were probably impracticable for a regular army, whose order was 
unbroken. But Decimus Brutus requested Octavius to cross the 
Apennines and intercept the division of Ventidius;i^° for the troops 
of Antonius, if left to themselves, would naturally dwindle away 
by desertion ; Avhereas, if they were reinforced immediately by a 
fresh army, their spirits would gradually recover, and their fidelit}'- 
to their chief would be confirmed. 

And here we want a more detailed account of events, and a 
more careful specification of dates than it is now 

Conduct of Octavius. mi^ •aii.i ^ i • i-iii 

possible to gain. All the veteran legions, which had 
been commanded by the late consuls, were now, with one excep- 
tion, under the orders of Octavius ; but it seems that neither they 
nor their general were inclined to obey the senate any longer. 
What excuses he made to Decimus Brutus for not attempting to 
intercept Yentidius, we cannot tell ; but no such attempt was made, 
and it was impossible for him, so soon after the battle, to have 
received intelligence of those decrees of the senate which his par- 
tisans represent as so injurious to him. The fact appears to be, 
that the death of both the consuls instantly opened to Octavius 
a new prospect ; and that his thoughts were henceforward bent 
far more on forwarding his own schemes of ambition at Rome,, 
than on lending any effectual assistance to Decimus Brutus. He 
conceived the design of procuring his own election to the consul- 
ship for the remaining months of the year ; and possibly he show- 
ed some symptoms of his intentions immediately after the battle 
of Mutina; for Decimus Brutus gives some intimations of this 
kind in a letter to Cicero, dated on the fifth of May.'^' If this 
were at all suspected, it was just and reasonable that the senate 
should endeavour to transfer the chief command of the armies in 
Italy to an officer on whom more reliance could be placed ; and, 
accordingly, it was proposed by L. Livius Drusus,^^'^ the father of 
the future wife of Octavius, and by L. iEmilius Paulus, that the 
fourth legion and the Martian should be given up to Decimus 
Brutus. This was never done, for the soldiers would not be com- 
manded by one of Caesar's assassins,^" and Octavius wa snot at all 
unwilling to avail himself of their inclinations, and to plead his 
inability to comply with the senate's order. 

Yet although his conduct in this matter, combined with his 

170 Ad Familiares, XI. epist. X. vacuitas, non te fugit. Satis me multa 

iTi Ad ^Familiares, XL epist X. Pri- scripsisse, quae literis commendari possint, 

mum omnium, quantam perturbationem arbitror. Scio enim, cui scribam. 

rerum urbanarum nflerat obitus Consulum, i72 Ad Familiares, XI. epist. XIX. 

quantamque cupiditatem hominibus injiciat iT3 Ad Familiares, XI. epist. XIV. 



THE ARMY IRRITATED AGAINST THE SENATE. 491 

designs upon the consulship, and his negligence in acting against 
Antonius and Ventidius, must have given just offence, nothing 
was decreed by the senate against him ; but a deputation of sena- 
tors was sent to the legions to try whether they could not be pre- 
vailed upon to remain firm in their duty, and to pacify them with 
regard to some claims for pay and military rewards which they 
had been lately advancing.'^* In times of civil war, which are 
necessarily accompanied by great public and private distress, the 
government naturally finds it difficult to pay the armies by which 
it is supported ; and this inability is commonly made a handle 
by the soldiers and their generals to colour their own usurpations. 
The poverty of the Roman treasury was very great, and it seemed 
impossible to supply it without having recourse to direct taxa- 
tion, ''^^ from which the Romans had been exempted ever since 
the conquest of Macedonia by L. ^milius Paulus. A property 
tax of one per cent, appears accordingly to have been levied •j''^^ 
but the money thus procured was no more than sufficient to dis- 
charge the promises formerly made by the senate to the fourth 
legion and the Martian for their early desertion of the cause of 
Antonius. A vote passed besides, that lands should be distributed 
among the soldiers of four legions;^'''' but which they were, is not 
mentioned. And as a commission of ten senators had lately been 
appointed, "^^ for the purpose of examining the acts of Antonius 
during his consulship, and amongst the rest his grants of lands to 
Caesar's veteran soldiers, it appears that some of the members of 
this commission were anxious to have the management of the 
grants now proposed to be made to the four legions, which they 
would have connected with the reversal of those made by Anto- 
nius. All the commissioners were warm partisans of the aris- 
tocracy, and Cicero was amongst the most distinguished of the 
number ; but on account of the jealousy which was felt towards 
every military man who might possess a dangerous influence 
over the soldiery, neither Decimus Brutus nor Octavius were in- 
cluded amongst them. In these measures there The amy is imtated 
was a spirit manifested which alarmed and irritated against the senate. 
all the partisans of Caesar, and which made the army fear that 
they should soon be deprived of the fruits of their victories. The 
veterans expressed their indignation, that while their own generals 
were slighted, all the acts of government were directed by 
Cicero ;i" and all the bounties which they were to receive were 

174 Velleius Paterculus, II. 62. Appian, vocem tributi ; quod ex centissim^ colla- 

III. "86. turn impudenti censu locupletum in duarum 

'■'s Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist. legionum prsemis omne consumitur. 
XXX. Pecunia conquiritur undique, ut i^T Ad Familiares, XI. epist. XX. 
optime meritis mllitibus promissa solvan- I'J'S Ad Familiares, XI. epist. XX. XXI. 

tur; quod quidem fieri sine tribute posse Appian, III. 82. 
non arbitror. its Cicero, ad Familiares, XL epist. 

Its Cicero, ad Brutum, I. epist. XVIII. XX. 
Obdurescunt magis quotidie boni viri ad 



402 THE SOLDIERS REFUSE THE TERMS OP THE SENATE, 

to be given them by men of whom they had no knowledge, and 
from whose gratitude or ambition they had nothing to expect. 

Such language repeated by every person around him served, 
perhaps, to excuse to Octavius himself the guilt of the conduct 
which he meditated. He threw himself into the hands of his 
soldiers, with the mutual understanding that he should defend 
their interests while they served the ends of his ambition. His 
own grounds of offence against the senate were utterly trifling. 
It is a mere mockery of all government, when a military officer 
thinks himself justified in committing treason, because his ser- 
vices have not been rewarded according to his estimate of their 
merits ; and Decimus Brutus had as much right as Octavius to 
complain of the omission of his name among the ten commission- 
ers. But Decimus Brutus, instead of turning the irritation of the 
soldiers to his own purposes, wrote to Cicero to acquaint him with 
it, and to advise him to take some steps to pacify it. He recom- 
mended that no one legion should be favoured above the rest ; 
that the lands which had belonged to the soldiers of Antonius, 
should be divided amongst the veterans who had fought under 
the late consuls and Octavius ; and that Octavius and himself 
should be intrusted with the distribution of them. Cicero, in an- 
swer, expressed his entire approbation of these proposals j^^" as- 
sured Decimus Brutus that he had already prevented his col- 
leagues in the commission from having the management of the 
division of lands, and that it was not his fault that neither Deci- 
mus nor Octavius had been included amongst the commissioners. 
Under these circumstances, it was the army, and not Octavius 
personally, whom it seemed expedient to the senate to conciliate. 
Their demands of pay and of rewards in land, were to be satis- 
fied or moderated ; their jealousy of the senate and of the civil 
authorities, was to be lessened ; and they were to be persuaded 
to show their obedience and their respect to the usual practice of 
the commonwealth, by submitting to the command of Decimus 
Brutus, who was consul elect, rather than to that of a youth of 
nineteen, who had been only qualified to exercise any military 
authority at all, by the extraordinary favour of the senate in dis- 
pensing with the strict observance of the laws in his behalf. But 
They refuse to listen wheu thc dcputatiou of tlic scuatc reached the 
rm\TtheTenate.'° camp of Octavius, the soldiers professed to be in- 
dignant that they were addressed distinctly from their general ;'®^ 
and Octavius, who had probably determined already on the part 
which he was to act, affected to be deeply injured, and while he 
professed his readiness to obey the senate, only inflamed the 
veterans still more by his pretended meekness, and determined 

>8o Cicero, ad Familiares, XI. epist. '9' Velleius Paterculus, II. 62. 
XXI. 



THE SENATE DECLARES LEPIDUS AN ENEMY. 493 

them to persist in their refusal to Usten to any communication 
which they did not receive through him. 

The defection of Lepidus, which took place, as we have seen, 
on the twenty-ninth of May, made Octavius more anxious than 
ever to terminate his opposition to Antonius. It seems that in 
the beginning of June, Plancus had carried his forces across the 
Alps, and had formed a junction with those of Decimus Brutus, 
in the neighbourhood of Eporedia or Ivrea. Their united army 
consisted of four veteran legions, of one of two years' standing, 
and of nine newly levied j'^'^ so that although some of these were 
probably incomplete, yet the numerical strength of the whole 
must have been very considerable. But hardly any superiority 
of numbers could enable the newly-raised troops to meet veterans 
in the field ; so that in opposing the united armies of Lepidus, 
Antonius, and Ventidius, the four veteran legions were the only 
part of their force on which Plancus and Brutus could safely cal- 
culate. Plancus, therefore, sent repeated letters to Octavius, re- 
questing him to march to their assistance ; and Octavius answered 
them by assurances that he was coming without delay, although, 
in fact, he was bent on moving in the very opposite direction, 
and on employing his troops, not against Antonius, but against 
the senate and people of Rome. Meantime, the senate, on the 
thirtieth of June, declared M. Lepidus a public The senate declares 
enemy, together with all his adherents;'**^ and it enl'm".^ ^ ^"''^"^ 
seems to have been a question whether or no the veteran legions 
in the province of Africa, and M. Brutus, with his victorious 
army in Greece, should be recalled for the defence of Italy. It 
seems probable that Caesar's frfbnds, as long as the intentions of 
Octavius were any way doubtful, represented that it could not 
fail to disgust and alienate him entirely, if the senate appeared to 
mistrust his fidelity ; and, above all, if M. Brutus were called in 
to overawe him in the centre of Italy, whilst the command of the 
war in the north had been just transferred from him to Decimus. 
Accordingly, the fear of offending Octavius seems to have had 
such influence, that M. Brutus, although privately urged by 
Cicero to cross over into Italy, was never oflicially summoned 
home by the senate ; but two legions from the army in Africa 
were sent for, and were despatched accordingly by Q,, Cornificius, 
the commander of the province ; they did not, however, arrive in 
Rome till the month of August, and their arrival, after all, as we 
shall see, produced no benefit. It was in the month of July that 
Octavius sent to the capital a deputation from his army, headed 
by one of his centurions, to request, or rather to demand, that he 
should be elected consul.'" Wishing, as we may suppose, to 

182 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. 1^4 Cicero, ad Familiares, X. epist. 
XXIV. XXIV. Suetonius, in Augusto, 26 

^' Cicero, ad Familiares, XII. epist, X. 



404 CiESAR'S ASSASSINS ARE CONDEMNED. 

avoid the infamy of such an outrage, he had before endeavoured 
to find some friend amongst the magistrates or members of the 
senate, who would propose his request in a less obnoxious man- 
ner ; but Cicero affirms, '^^ as a splendid proof of the unanimous 
good spirit by which the people were actuated, that not a single 
individual could be prevailed upon to countenance his ambition. 
Military deputation His soldlcrs, howcvor, wcrc less scrupulous ; and 
Romef uj'^TemMd ^^ ^^ mentioned, that when the deputation was ad- 
the consulship. mltted into the senate, and had declared the wishes 
of the army, the centurion who headed it, finding that the senators 
hesitated in complying, threw back his military cloak, and point- 
ing to the hilt of his sword, exclaimed, " If you refuse our request, 
this shall grant it." When such treasonable language could be 
uttered with impunity, a military despotism was, in fact, already 
established. The senate could not, at once, be induced to sur- 
render up that liberty which so lately seemed to have been secure- 
ly recovered ; but Octavius determined now to throw oif the mask 
octavius marches to altogether, put his army in motion from Cisalpine 
cMTuttogtiheS Gaul, entered Italy, as we are told, by the very 
^- P'^'^'"'- road which his uncle had taken at the beginning of 

his rebellion, '^5 advanced without opposition to the very gates of 
the capital, occupied the Campus Martins with his troops, and 
thus, under the imminent terror of a military usurpation, he was 
admitted into the city, and was elected consul, together with d. 
Pedius, an old officer of his uncle, in the month of August, 710.'^'' 
From this moment the liberty of the commonwealth was lost for 
ever ; the senate, now the helpless instrument of military violence, 
was obliged to repeal its former aecrees, by which Antonius and 
Lepidus had been declared public enemies ; and the famous Pedi- 
an law was proposed and carried by Q,. Pedius, which enacted 
The assassins of ca;- that all thc assasslns of C6esar, and all who had 
fiawlirought^fOTwa^d approved of the murder, should be brought to trial 
by Q. Pedius. fQj. ^\^^^ crlmc, and on condemnation should be for- 

bidden the use of fire and water, according to the usual style of 
attainder. It is said that M. Agrippa came forward as the accu- 
ser of C. Cassius under this law ;'*'^ and as neither he nor any of 
the other conspirators were in Rome to answer to the charge, sen- 
tence of condemnation was passed against them all. In the midst 
of these disturbances, the two legions from Africa arrived in 
Italy ;'^^ but the soldiers were soon corrupted by the general ex- 
ample of their comrades, and put themselves under the command 
of Octavius, 

We have now reached the period at which we can no longer 
avail ourselves of the inestimable guidance of Cicero and his cor- 

"5 Ad Brutum, I. epist. X. '" Velleius Paterculus, II. 65. 69. 

186 Appian, de Bello Civili, III. 88, et '^^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. 
seq. '^^ Appian, III. 92. 



EXECUTION OF DECIMUS BRUTUS. 495 

respondents ; and we are left at the very moment when our curi- 
osity and interest are most intensely excited, without any means 
of gratifying them. We might, indeed, still present our readers 
with a very detailed narrative of the course of events, if we could 
prevail on ourselves to rely on Dion Cassius and Appian. But 
as we have found how little they are to he trusted when we have 
been able to try them by a reference to good authorities, so when 
we have no opportunity of doing so, we cannot follow them with 
confidence, nor will we injure the truth of history by the indis- 
criminate admission of evidence so worthless. 

It seems that Octavius, soon after his usurpation of the consul- 
ship, took the field to watch the movements of Antonius, who, 
since his junction with Lepidus, appears to have remained for 
some time quietly in Gaul, and not to have made any attempts 
against the army of Plancus and Brutus. But it is likely that he 
was prepared for the change in the conduct of Octavius, and 
rightly augured that he should draw from his consulship the same 
advantages which he must otherwise have risked a battle to gain. 
Asinius PolliOj'^" findhig that Cgesar's officers were Asinms ppiiio and l. 
all uniting in one common cause, and that his heir piancus join Antonius. 
was on the point of taking his natural station amongst them, sur- 
rendered his legions to Antonius ; and L. Plancus did not hesitate 
to separate his troops from those of Decimus Brutus, and to follow 
the example of PoUio. Of the four veteran legions which Plan- 
cus and Brutus had commanded, three had belonged to Plancus ;^^' 
and when these submitted to Antonius, it is likely that the single 
one which had been commanded by Brutus, was easily induced 
to follow the example of its comrades. It is said, also, that Plan- 
cus endeavoured to make his defection still more acceptable to 
Antonius,^^^ i^y treacherously getting the person of his late asso- 
ciate into his power. In this he failed, but Decimus Brutus soon 
found that he could not depend upon the newly-raised legions, 
which alone continued to acknoAvledge his authori- oecimusBrutusisde- 
ty. They gradually dropped away from him, and |X?dlaVo.,?s'tte".' 
Brutus saw that his only resource was to escape, if "'^^^ '"'o '^''^^•=6. 
possible, from Italy, and reach the camp of M. Brutus in Greece. 
His troops at last deserting him altogether, he assumed the disguise 
of a Gaul, and hoped, by avoiding all the ordinary roads, to make 
his way to Aquileia and Illyricum, through the territories of the 
Gaulish chiefs, which bordered upon the A Ips. He was discovered, 
however, by one of the chiefs, who instantly detained him, and 
sent word to Antonius of his capture. Antonius He is taken and put 
sent a party of soldiers to put him to death, and to AntS.'''' ""^^^ "^ 

^^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 63. Livy, '92 Velleius Paterculus, II. 64. Livy, 

Epitome, CXX. Epitome, CXX. Appian, III. 97, 98.— 

'" Cicero, ad Familiares. X. epist. Valerius Maximus, IX. 13. 
XXIV. 



406 MEETING OP ANTONIUS, LEPIDUS, AND AUGUSTUS. 

bring his head away with them, and his commands were speedily- 
executed. If, as it is reported, the Gauhsh chief who betrayed 
him had formerly received great kindnesses at his hands,"^ Deci- 
mus Brutus met with a treatment more exactly corresponding to 
the pecuHar perfidy and ingratitude which he had himself shown 
in the assassination of Csesar. It is true that in the last part of 
his life he had well and honourably supported the cause of the 
commonwealth ; but if Anton ius had never been guilty of a worse 
crime than the putting him to death, his conduct would have had 
some plea of retaliation to urge ; and amidst the low morality of 
the times, the illegality of the action might seem excused by the 
former illegal violence of him who was now the victim, 

Octavius, or Augustus as we shall for the future call him,^" 
now invested with the title of consul, and commanding a nume- 
rous army, marched back again towards Cisalpine Gaul, and 
found that Antonius and Lepidus had by this time recrossed the 
Alps, and were arrived in the neighbourhood of Mutina. A 
friendly correspondence had been carried on between the chiefs 
of the two armies before they were advanced very near to one 
another ; and it was determined that all differences should finally 
be settled, and the future measures which they were to take in 
Meeting between commou, should bc arranged at a personal inter- 

Antonius.Lepidus . / t-1ji ,• ^ii 

and Augustus. vicw. Accordmgly, the mcctmg took placc m One 

of the islands,'^5 if gg they may be called, which were formed in 
the low fenny district between the Apennines and the Po, by the 
numerous streams which descended from the mountains, and 
which for want of a proper drainage spread themselves to a vast 
extent over the low country, encircling various tracts of marshy 
ground in their irregular courses. On one of these spots, which 
the subsequent alterations in the nature of the country would 
soon make it almost impossible to identify, amidst a scenery, the 
dull and loathsome character of which well befitted the actors 
and the acts which they meditated, Antonius, Lepidus, and Au- 
gustus, held their conference. It was pretended afterwards by the 

193 Appian, III. 98. nio, 19. Such a spot as that described in 

194 We have resolved to call Octavius the text, was the isle of Athelney, in Som- 
henceforward by the name of Augustus, ersetshire, to which Alfred is said to have 
in order that the cruelties of the triumvi- retired when the Danes had overrun his 
rate, and the splendour of the imperial kingdom. And the isle of Ely still retains 
government, may be distinctly associated the name of an island, which it obtained 
in the reader's mind with one and the same originally from similarity of situation. — 
person ; for otherwise the emperor seems The progress of agricultural improvement 
to have derived a real benefit from his so alters the appearance of such districts, 
change of name, and Octavius with all his that Athelney now can scarcely, if at all, 
atrocities is forgotten, while we think on- be recognized ; and the country between 
ly of Augustus, the peaceful sovereign of the Apennines and the Po, which was in 
the civilized world, the patron of litera- the days of the triumvirate little better 
ture, and the idol of the favourite writers than a great fen, is now described to be 
of our youth. one of the richest and most delightful parts 

195 Appian, IV. 2, Plutarch, in Anto- in Italy. 



THE GREAT PROSCRIPTION. 407 

writers, who flourished under the imperial government, '^^ that 
Augustus for a long time remonstrated against the bloody execu- 
tions which Antonius and Lepidus were eager to perpetrate ; but 
his language at a private meeting could not be so well ascertained 
as his subsequent conduct ; and this, it is confessed, was more 
remorseless than that of either of his associates ; for whilst Anto- 
nius and Lepidus listened in several instances to the influence of 
entreaties or of favour, and spared those whom they had con- 
demned to death, it is mentioned that Augustus did not pardon a 
single victim,^*'' But whatever discussions may have taken place 
between the three leaders, the result sufficiently proved that all 
principles and all feelings of good were overpowered in their 
minds by revenge and ambition. They constituted themselves 
into a Triumvirate, pr High Commission of Three,^^* for settling 
the affairs of the commonwealth during five years ; they divid- 
ed among themselves those provinces of the em- The second tnumvi- 
pire which were subject to their power ; and nomi- u.c. 711. 
nated the persons who were to hold the usual annual magistra- 
cies during the term of the Triumvirate ; they made such liberal 
promises to their armies, that it is said that eighteen of the finest 
cities in Italy, together with the territories adjacent to them, were 
to be given up to the soldiers as military colonies ; and they 
agreed to draw up a list of proscription, including the names of 
all those individuals whom they proposed to murder. To cement 
the personal union of the Triumvirs, it was resolved that Clo- 
dia,'^^ the daughter-in-law of Antonius, being the daughter of his 
wife Fulvia by her first husband P. Clodius, should be given in 
marriage to Augustus ; but she was as yet too young to become a 
wife, and in a short time afterwards, the nominal connexion 
which policy had formed, was, by a change of political circum- 
stances, as readily dissolved. 

Immediately after the conclusion of this agreement, and while 
its purport was unknown at Rome, orders were de- The great proacrip- 
spatched to the capital for the murder of twelve or *'°"- 
sixteen individuals whom the Triumvirs wished to destroy before 
any general alarm was given.*^"" Some of these victims were 
suddenly assassinated in the streets, or at social entertainments ; 
and although the armies of the Triumvirs were yet at a distance, 
the consul Gi. Pedius, who had been left by Octavius at Rome, 
sanctioned these crimes by his authority, and at once showed to 
the people the hopelessness of the evil under which they had 
fallen. He attempted, indeed, to allay the panic which these 
first murders occasioned, by publishing the names of the indi-- 
viduals whom he had been ordered to destroy, and by assurances 

^ Velleius Paterculus, II. 66. ws Suetonius, in Augusto, 62. 

"7 Suetonius, in Augusto, 27. 200 Appian, IV. 6, et seq. 

193 Livy, Epitome, CXX. Appian, IV. 3. 

27 



408 EXTENT OP THE PROSCRIPTION. 

thal^no others should be molested. But it is said that Pedius 
died suddenly, in consequence of his excessive personal exertions 
to preserve tranquillity in the city ; and the Triumvirs were thus 
freed from the difficulty in which his official limitation of the 
number of the proscribed might otherwise have involved them. 
A few days afterwards they entered Rome with their troops ; the 
comitia were assembled in mockery ; the appointment of the Tri- 
umvirate was proposed by P. Titius (one of the tribunes who had 
before distinguished himself by his opposition to Cicero's mea- 
sures), and was of course agreed to without a murmur. Then 
the lists of proscription began to be published ; but gradually, 
as had been done before by Sylla, as if to protract the misery of 
the sufferers by this horrible state of suspense. The lists were 
accompanied by a proclamation, which Appjan professes to have 
faithfully translated into Greek from its Latin original, and to 
which probably no other parallels can be found in history than 
that which defended the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and that 
which encouraged the populace of Paris to the murders com- 
mitted in the prisons in September, 1792. It is remarkable, too, 
that in the latter of these two cases, the very same excuse was as- 
signed for the massacres as was now alleged by the Triumvirs. 
" Whilst we are hastening to attack our enemies abroad," said 
Lepidus", Antonius, and Augustus, " we cannot with safety leave 
so many other enemies behind us in Rome ; nor again can we 
linger to take precautions against our domestic adversaries, lesi 
the dangers with which we are threatened from abroad become 
too formidable to be overcome." " Whilst the patriots are hasten- 
ing to the defence of their country in the plains of Champagne;" 
said the municipality of Paris, " they cannot leave their wives 
and children exposed to the machinations of those numerous 
aristocrats who will be let loose from tlieir prisons on the first 
successes obtained by the enemy, to fill our streets and our houses 
with bloodshed." 

Under pretence of thus providing for their security, the Tri- 
Extcntofthepro- umvlrs inscrlbed on the proscription list the names 
scription. of one huudrcd and thirty senators,"" at the lowest 

computation, and of a far greater number of the equestrian order. 
All persons were forbidden to harbour or to promote the escape 
of any of the proscribed, under pain of being sentenced to the 
same fate themselves f°^ while rewards were offered to any who 
should put them to death, and bring their heads to the Trium- 
virs ; and it was added, that no record should be kept of the pay- 
ment of this blood-money, that he who received it might not 
hereafter be exposed to the public detestation. That no aggra- 
vation of wickedness might be wanting, each of the three associ- 

»' Livy, Epitome, CXX. aw Appian, IV. II. 



CICERO AMONG THE PROSCRIBED. 499 

ates stained themselves with the blood of some near relation or 
former friend. M. Lepidus insisted that his brother, L, ^milius 
Paulus, should be proscribed;'^" Antonius inserted on the list 
the name of his uncle, L. Caesar ; and Augustus added that of his 
guardian, C. Toranius. In emulation of the chiefs, L. Plancus 
requested that his brother, Plotius Plancus, might be amongst the 
victims ; and, if Appian may be credited, Asinius Pollio, in like 
manner, procured the murder of his father-in-law. The rewards 
offered to the murderers added the instigations of avarice to those 
of revenge or fear, and produced instances of the most horrible 
domestic treachery ; freedmen ■ betraying their patrons, slaves 
their masters, and children their parents. It is the remark of Pa- 
terculus,^®* that the proscription was marked by the heroic fidelity 
of wives towards their husbands, whilst the conduct of sons 
towards their fathers was peculiarly undutiful and perfidious ; 
and he imputes this to the eagerness which men feel to anticipate 
their hopes of future advantage ; for the son hoped by the merit 
of his parricide to save his father's property from confiscation, 
and to obtain an earlier possession of his inheritance. Anec- 
dotes of these fearful times were greedily collected, and volumes, 
as we are told, were filled with them f^^ some recording the most 
tragical deaths, and others the most extraordinary escapes, of 
those who were destined to destruction. But of all the victims of 
the proscription we must select the most illustrious, and follow as 
carefully as we can the circumstances of the fate of M. Cicero. 

From the moment that we can no longer derive any informa- 
tion concerning him from his own writings, our 
knowledge of his conduct becomes much less accu- ^"^'^^^°^m<^''=«'°- 
rate. The latest of his own letters, which has been preserved to 
us, is one written to M. Brutus on the twenty-seventh of July.^os 
in which he expresses great fears lest Augustus should disappoint 
all his hopes, and should falsify by some act of treason all the 
praises which he had bestowed upon him. But two letters from 
Brutus are extant,^"'' apparently of a still later date, written one 
to Cicero and the other to T. Atticus, in both of which Cicero is 
taxed with an excessive complaisance towards Augustus, and is 
accused particularly of having interceded with him in too humble 
a manner in behalf of the conspirators against Csesar, and even of 
having endeavoured to conciliate him by condemning their con- 
duct, and by attacking P. Casca, who was one of the tribunes 
for the year, and who, on the motion of P. Titius, had been de- 
graded from his office by the votes of the tribes, since Augustus 
had usurped the consulship. It is very likely that Cicero was 

203 Livy, Epitome, CXX. Suetonius, ^"s Epist. ad Brutum, I. epist. XVIII. 
in Augusto, 27. 207 Epist. ad Brutum, I. epist. XVI. 

2»* II. 67. XVII. 

205 Appian, IV. 16. 



410 FLIGHT AND ADVENTURES OP CICERO. 

somewhat too credulous in trusting to the fair professions which 
Augustus constantly made to him ; he believed, besides, that in 
spite of the pernicious counsels of his military friends, so young a 
man could not yet be thoroughly corrupted, and might still be led 
to choose the better part, if his suspicions of the aristocracy could 
be lessened. With this view he thought it politic to praise him, 
and to move that extraordinary honours should be granted him ; 
he may also have felt that if Augustus could be taught to respect 
the constitution of his country, much might be indulged to his 
natural resentment towards the assassins of his uncle ; and that 
in speaking to him of them and of their conduct, the language of 
deprecation and censure was more fitting than any higher tone. 
It is true that Cicero's personal enmity against Antonius made 
him over-estimate the services which Augustus had rendered in 
first taking up arms against him ; nor did he rightly appreciate 
the real danger which threatened the commonwealth, and which 
arose not from the ambition of any one man, however unprin- 
cipled, but from the power and insolence of the army at large, 
who were now conscious of their strength, and were determined 
to exert it. We are told that Cicero at one time was desirous of 
becoming the colleague of Augustus in the consulship ;2''s and if 
he could have etfected this, the evil designs of his colleague would 
have been in a great measure neutralized ; the declarations of the 
senate against Antonius and Lepidus would not have been so 
easily repealed ; the law condemning the assassins of Caesar might 
not have passed, nor the nominal authority of government have 
been so speedily transferred to that party which had hitherto 
been considered as in a state of rebellion. But Augustus having 
the power of the sword in his hands, determined to avail himself 
of it to the utmost ; he chose, therefore, for his colleague, not 
Cicero, but Gi. Pedius ; and the first measures of his consulship 
must have almost prepared Cicero for that consummation of 
treachery which was soon afterwards displayed in establishing 
the Triumvirate. 

It is said that the name of Cicero was included in that first 
list of victims whom Q,. Pedius received orders to destroy before 
the arrival of the Triumvirs at Rome. But be this as it may, 
Cicero could not doubt of his own danger, from the moment that 
he heard of the conferences and engagements between the three 
generals. He instantly, therefore, quitted the capital, '^"^ and re- 
tired to his villa near Tusculum, whence, by cross roads, he 
escaped to another of his villas near Formic, intending to em- 
bark on board of a vessel at Caieta, and make the best of his way 
by sea to Macedonia. A vessel was provided for him, and he 

^ Plutarch, in Cicerone, 45, 46. 209 Livy, Fragm. apud Senecam, inter 

Fragraenta T. Livii editum. 



HE IS MURDERED. 4X1 

commenced his voyage; but the wind was contrary, and the 
delay thus occasioned, together with the sickness which he al- 
ways felt severely at sea, induced him to return and to take no 
further steps to avoid the fate which awaited him. " I will die," 
he said, " in that country which I have so often saved." He was 
now sixty-three years of age, so that death seemed to him prefer- 
able to the miseries and anxieties of a doubtful flight. He landed, 
therefore, once more, and returned to his Formian villa near Caieta. 
Here he was disposed to remain and to meet his death, but his 
slaves,'^^" who were warmly attached to him, could not bear to see 
him thus sacrificed ; and when the party of soldiers sent to mur- 
der him was advancing towards the villa, they almost forced 
him to put himself into his litter, and to allow them to carry him 
once more on board of the vessel which was still lying at Caieta. 
But as they were bearing the litter towards the sea, they were 
overtaken in the walks of his own grounds by the soldiers who 
were in search of him, and who were headed by one Heren- 
nius, a centurion, and by C. Popilius Laenas. Popilius was a 
native of Picenum,*^" and had, on a former occasion, been suc- 
cessfully defended by Cicero, when brought to trial for some of- 
fence before the courts at Rome. As the assistance of advocates 
was given gratuitously, the connexion between them and their 
clients was esteemed very differently from what it is amongst us ; 
and it was, therefore, an instance of pecuUar atrocity that Popi- 
Uus ofiered his services to Antonius to murder his patron, from 
no other motive than the hope of gaining his favour by showing 
such readiness to destroy his greatest enemy. The slaves of Ci- 
cero,^^'' undismayed at the appearance of the soldiers, prepared to 
defend their master ; but he refused to allow any blood to be shed 
on his account, and commanded them to set down the litter, and 
to await the issue in silence. He was obeyed, and when the sol- 
diers came up, he stretched out his head with perfect calmness, 
and submitted his neck to the sword of Popilius. 
When the murder was accomplished, the soldiers ^' ^' '^"^ 

cut off his two hands also, as the instruments with which he had 
written his Philippic orations ; and the head and hands were both 
carried to Rome and exposed together at the rostra, at the very 
place where he had been so lately heard with an universal feel- 
ing of admiration, " such," says Livy, "as no human tongue had 
ever excited before." Men crowded to see his mangled remains, 
and testified by their tears, the compassion and affection which 
his unworthy death and his pure and amiable character had so 
justly deserved. 

In reviewing the political life of Cicero, it cannot, we think, 

210 Plutarch, in Cicerone, 47, 48. 212 Fragment. Livii, ubi sopra. 

211 Valerius Maximus, V. 3. 



412 POLITICAL CHARACTER OF CICERO. 

pouticai character be doubted, that none of his contemporaries sur- 
of Cicero. passcd him in the hberahty of his views, or the in- 

tegrity of his motives. He has been usually charged with vai 1- 
lation and timidity throughout the period which elapsed between 
his return from banishment in 696, and the close of the civil war 
between Pompey and Ceesar. It seems, indeed, that in all great 
political convulsions, candour and acuteness are apt to lead to in- 
decision i*^" it is certain, at least, that they will incur the reproach 
of it from all the more violent partisans of either side. At Rome 
immeditaely before the commencement of Caesar's rebellion, 
neither of the two parties by which the state was divided, was 
worthy of the cordial support of an honest and well-judging citi- 
zen. The heads of the high aristocracy were selfish and violent ; 
the popular tribunes and the military leaders, whose interests 
they served, were turbulent and unprincipled. A few years earlier, 
while Pompey and Ca?sar were as yet acting in union with one 
another, the aristocratical leaders were not such as to encourage 
confidence ; and their jealousy of Cicero, because he was not by 
birth or inclination exclusively connected with themselves, was a 
public as well as a personal reason for his regarding them with 
suspicion and dislike. At the same time, Cicero must be allowed 
to have been biassed at this particular period by private feelings ; 
by the flattering language of Pompey and Caesar on the one side, 
which affected the placability of his nature even more than its 
vanity, and by the countenance which the aristocracy at this time 
gave to his enemy Clodius, because they wished to employ his 
services in annoying the triumvirate. The greatest error into 
which these feelings led him, was the speech which he made in 
the senate " On the disposal of the consular provinces," in which 
he pronounced a high panegyric upon Csesar, and urged that he 
should be continued in his command in Gaul, while at the same 
time he advised the recall of Piso from Macedonia, and ofGabin- 
ius from Syria. But six years before the commencement of Caesar's 
rebellion, it was hardly to be suspected tbat he intended to use his 
province as a means of enabling him to make war upon his coun- 
try, or that he had no thoughts of resigning his command in Gaul 
till it should be exchanged for the sovereignty of the empire. 

When the civil war at last broke out, Cicero disapproved of the 
system on which Pompey intended to conduct it, and particularly 
of his purpose of leaving Italy. Yet he was only prevented at 
first from following him into Greece by the rapid advance of Cae- 
sar's army into Apulia, by which he was precluded from joining 

2'3 To Trpds airav ^vvcrnv, cnl vav dpydv. — factions in Greece represented the charac- 

Td Si aCxppov, tov dvafSpov vpdaxij'a- Such ters of those few moderate and upright 

was tlie manner in whicliThucydides tells men who regarded both the contending 

us that the violent and unprincipled mem- parties with equal disapprobation. III. 82, 
bers of the aristocratical and democratical 



POLITICAL CHARACTER OF CICERO. 413 

Pompey at Brundusium ; and afterwards, having tried in vain, 
yet without the least compromise of his own character, to persuade 
Caesar to conclude a peace on equitable terms, he escaped from 
Italy on the first opportunity, and joined the standard of the com- 
monwealth in Macedonia. There a nearer view of the avowed 
sentiments and designs of the aristocratical leaders, made him, 
indeed, a lukewarm follower of their cause. To say nothing of 
the immediate confiscations and proscriptions which they an- 
nounced as the first fruits of their victory, Cicero might justly 
dread that their triumph would be followed by the re-enactment of 
Sylla's most tyrannical measures, the destruction of the tribunitian 
magistracy, and the appropriation of the whole judicial power to 
the senatorian order. Seeing thus so much to excite his fears in 
the success of either party, the miseries of civil war would natu- 
rally strike upon his mind with proportionate force ; and he wished 
to escape, at any rate, from any personal share in a struggle which 
he abhorred, as soon as he could with honour. Accordingly, after 
the battle of Pharsalia, he took no further part in the war, but re- 
turned to Italy, and received the conqueror's permission to live in 
the quiet enjoyment of his own property. When Caesar's power 
was finally established, Cicero kept up his former acquaintance 
with him on the terms of mutual civility ; but he received from 
him no favours, unless we consider it in that light, that his family 
was one amongst many which Caesar raised to the dignity of 
patricians, when he wished to fill up the losses sustained by that 
order in the late wars. At last, after Caesar's death, when a fair 
prospect opened of restoring the old constitution, Cicero acted with 
a degree of firmness and decision, which we think adds probability 
to the representation which we have given of his motives and 
feelings in the earlier part of his career. 

His main error, as it seems to us, in the latter part of his life, 
was his excessive partiality to the assassins of Caesar, and his 
throwing so great a military force into their hands. The murder 
of Caesar was an action, at the best, to be buried in oblivion. 
Except the single pretence of revenging his death, the new ene- 
mies of the constitution had not another excuse for their treason ; 
while the cause which Cicero upheld was perfectly pure, if it did 
not needlessly encumber itself by upholding an act of assassina- 
tion, and rewarding the murderers. The more respectable part of 
Caesar's old officers, such as Hirtius, and Pansa, and Cornificius, 
and of those moderate men who had submitted to his power 
without having shared in the guilt of his first rebellion, such as 
P. Servilius, Ser. Sulpicius, L. Philippus, and others, were the very 
men to whom the commonwealth might most safely have trusted 
the defence of its liberties against Antonius ; for not only would 
Caesar's veterans have obeyed them without reluctance, but all 
that numerous party who had been gainers by the late revolution, 



414 ACCOUNT OF OTHER PROSCRIBED PERSONS. 

looked upon these men as their security against the excesses of a 
complete reaction, and would have willingly supported the com- 
monwealth so long as they conducted the administration of it. 
And with them Cicero might safely have taken his place as their 
associate, or even as their leader ; for his eloquence and his integ- 
rity had made him long and generally popular: and the only 
ground of the offence which Caesar's veterans entertained against 
him, was his so closely connecting himself with the assassins of 
their general. Even Augustus himself might not so soon have 
proved a traitor, had he not seen that while Cicero was on the 
one hand courting his support, he was on the other conferring 
exorbitant powers on Brutus and Cassius, and investing them 
with the whole military command of the east. The restoration 
of the commonwealth might have been practicable; but to rein- 
state the old aristocracy, or the friends of Pompey, in their former 
supremacy, was clearly npt so. But perhaps after all, the preser- 
vation of any form of civil government was become impossible, 
since the army was grown so formidable as to form a distinct 
interest of its own, and since its favour or displeasure were held 
up even in the debates of the senate as objects of hope or fear. 
Be this as it may, Cicero died as he had lived, with a reputation 
of patriotism and integrity ; nor is his life, as a citizen, stained 
with any thing worse than some mixture of vanity and erroneous 
judgment amid many splendid instances of liberality and modera- 
tion, and wisdom and vigour. 

Amongst the other distinguished persons who were murdered 
someaccountofother iu thc samc proscriptiou, may be noticed Q,. Cicero 
the^proscrip'tion! '" and hls son, C. Toranius, a man of praetorian dig- 
nity,*^" and who had been guardian to Augustus ; L. Villius 
Annalis,"'^ one of the prastors for the present year; C. Plotius 
Plancus, the brother of L. Plancus ; and, according to Appian, 
Salvius,'^^^ one of the tribunes, and Minucius, also one of the prae- 
tors. L. Cassar,^^'' the uncle of Antonius, was saved by the in- 
fluence of his sister ; and L. Paulus, the brother of Lepidus, was 
allowed to escape by the soldiers sent to murder him, who res- 
pected, it is said, the brother of their general, or perhaps were 
shocked at the unnatural wickedness of that general, in command- 
ing the murder of so near a relation. M. Varro,^'^ formerly one of 
Pompey's lieutenants in Spain, but much more known as a man 
of letters, was saved by the intercession of Q-. Calenus. Apulius,"* 
perhaps the same person who was tribune in this very year, and 
who was warmly attached to Cicero, escaped to the army of M. 



2U Valerius Maximus, IX. 11. 


Sueto- 


2'6 Appian, 


, IV. 17. 


nius, in Augusto, 27. 




2'7 Appian, 


IV. 37. 


2'5 Valerius Maximus, IX. 11. 


Appi- 


"'^ Appian, 


JV. 47. 


an, IV. 18. 




2'^ Appian, 


IV. 46. 



ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE PROSCRIPTION. 415 

Brntus in Macedonia. Some of the expedients by Anecdotes relating to 
which individuals who had been proscribed pre- the proscription. 
served then* hves, are worthy of mention, as serving to illustrate 
the circumstances of the times. Sentius Saturninus Vetulio'^^" 
assumed the dress and ensigns of a prsetor, disguised his slaves 
as lictors, and proceeded from Rome towards Naples, with all the 
state of a public officer ; impressing carriages for his use, taking 
possession of the inns on the road, and obliging all travellers whom 
he met to move out of the way till he had passed. Having thus 
reached Puteoli in safety, he there pretended to be employed on the 
service of the state, and demanded some vessels for the conveyance 
of himself and his attendants, which being granted, he effected 
his passage in safety to Sicily, where Sex. Pompeius was holding 
the chief command. Antius Restio had been proscribed,^*^' and 
escaped from his house secretly by night, while his slaves, having 
heard of their master's sentence, were busily engaged in plundering 
his property. One slave alone had watched him, and followed 
him in his flight ; a man who had been branded in the face by 
his master for some offence, and had been confined in chains in 
his workhouse, from whence he had only been released by some of 
his fellow-servants at the time of the general ruin of their master's 
fortunes. This man overtook Antius, assured him that he enter- 
tained no resentment against him for the punishment which he 
had received, but rather felt grateful to him for many former 
kindnesses ; and having concealed him out of the way of the 
soldiers who were in search of him, he began to construct a 
funeral pile, and then having, without any scruple, murdered an 
old man who happened to be passing by on the road, he placed 
his body upon it. The soldiers coming up while he was thus 
employed, he hastened to tell them that he had himself killed the 
object of their search, in revenge for the former ill-treatment which 
he had received froni him ; and as his story seemed probable, they 
contented themselves with taking the head of the murdered man 
as that of Antius, in order to obtain the usual reward from the 
Triumvirs on producing it ; and suspicion being thus laid asleep, 
Antius himself was conducted from his hiding place by his slave, 
and escaped with him into Sicily. M. Volusius,'^^'^ one of the 
aediles, procured from a friend the dress of one of the ministers of 
Isis, and disguising himself in the long linen gown, and wearing the 
mask made like a dog's face, which were the distinguishing marks 
of that order of persons, he went about through the streets dancing 
and begging money of the passengers ; and in this manner he 
made his way through a considerable part of the country, till he 

220 Valerius Maximus, VII. 3. Appian, 22t Valerius Maximus, VII. 3. Appian> 
IV. 45. IV. 47. 

221 Valerius Maximus, VI. 8. Macrobi- 
us, Saturnalia, I. II. Appian, IV. 43. 



416 BEHAVIOUR OF THE TRIUMVIRS. 

at last escaped out of Italy. Some of the proscribed assumed 
the disguise of centurions, and arming their slaves as soldiers, 
went about as if they were themselves employed in the pursuit of 
others ; and once, it is mentioned, two of these parties fell in with 
one anotherj^'-" and each mistaking the other for the real emissaries 
of the Triumvirs, thej fought for some time without discovering 
their mutual mistake. One man of the name of Yitulinus,*^^^ formed 
a considerable force in the neighbourhood of Rhegium, partly out 
of those who were proscribed, and had, like himself, escaped the 
murderers, and partly out of the inhabitants of those eighteen 
cities of Italy which the Triumvirs had given up to their soldiers 
as settlements. Thus supported, he cut off several parties that 
were going about in pursuit of the proscribed, till at last, when a 
strong detachment was sent against him, he maintained several 
obstinate contests, and before he was killed had the satisfaction 
of knowing that his son, and several others who had been pro- 
scribed, had effected their escape to Sicily in safety. Amidst the 
horrors of the times, we are told that several orphans,'^'^^ of tender 
age, who were heirs to large properties, were included in the pro- 
scription, that their wealth might become the prey of the Trium- 
virs. One of these, of the name of Atilius, had just gone through 
the ceremony of putting on the manly gown, and was going, as 
was the custom, attended by a numerous company of his friends, 
to offer sacrifice at the temples. It was suddenly announced that 
his name was among the number of the proscribed ; the procession 
instantly dispersed, and Atilius, deserted by all his relations, fled 
to his mother's house for shelter. But even she refused to receive 
him, dreading to incur the penalty denounced against all who 
should harbour the proscribed. Thus cast off, and despairing of 
protection from any one else, when his own mother had abandoned 
him, he fled to an unfrequented part of the country and took refuge 
amongst the mountains ; but being obliged to descend into the val- 
leys to get food, he was seized by a kidnapper, who was in the 
habit of carrying off travellers, and confining them as slaves in 
his workhouse. Unable to bear the cruelties to which he was 
here exposed, he made his escape to the high road, and in utter 
despair gave himself up to the first military party that passed by, 
and was by them accordingly put to death. 

If any thing could be wanting to complete the general misery, 
Bei.aviourof the i^ ^as added by the utter insolence with which the 
Triumvirs. Triumvirs mocked the victims of their tyranny. 

Rufus Cajsetius, a senatorj^^s had been proscribed, because he was 
the owner of a house and property adjoining to those of Fulvia, 
the wife of Antonius, and had often refused to sell them to her 

223 Appian, 46. 22s Valerius Maximus, IX. 5. Appian, 

224 Appian, 25. 29. 
825 Appian, .30. 



RAPACITY OF THE TRIUMVIRS. 41'7 

He was murdered, and his head as usual was brought to Anto- 
nius, who happened to be at table with a party of his associates. 
After carefully examining the features of the face, Antonius said 
to the soldiers, " This is no acquaintance of mine,'"'^'' and desired 
them to take it to Fulvia, and she ordered it to be exposed, not 
as usual at the rostra, but in front of the house which had been 
the occasion of his murder. M. Lepidus and L. Plancus,^^^ in 
the very midst of the proscription, determined to enjoy the hon- 
ours of a triumph for some victories which they had gained 
while commanding respectively the provinces of Gallia Narbon- 
nensis, and Gallia Transalpina. An order was issued, com- 
manding that the usual marks of general rejoicing should not 
be omitted ; that the people should attend the triumphal pro- 
cession, and should offer sacrifices of thanksgiving at the temples. 
It must be remembered that Lepidus and Plancus had each 
caused the name of his own brother to be inserted in the lists of 
the proscribed ; and in allusion to this, their own soldiers, avail- 
ing themselves of the customary license of the occasion, shouted 
aloud, as they followed their chariots, " De Germanis, non de 
Gallis, duo triumphant consules.''^^^ 

One object of all these dreadful atrocities had been the money 
which the Triumvirs hoped to gain from the sale 
of the property of their victims.'^so g^t in this Their rapacity. 

hope they were greatly disappointed. The plate and most articles 
of valuable furniture were generally plundered by the slaves of 
the owner, as soon as his name was seen on the fatal list ; and 
the horses and landed estates could only be sold at low prices, 
because the people in general considered it infamous to become 
purchasers ; and A. Cascellius,*^^^ a lawyer of high reputation, 
steadily refused to make any instrument of conveyance for proper- 
ty granted by the Triumvirs, or possibly sold at their auctions, 
considering such means of acquiring it to be no belter than rob- 
bery. Accordingly the Triumvirs, finding themselves still in 
want of money, drew out a list of fourteen hundred ladies,^^^ who 
were ordered to make exact returns of their property, that a pro- 
portionate tax might be levied upon them. This excited great 
indignation, and the persons aggrieved having first applied in 
vain for the intercession of the female relations of the Triumvirs, 
assembled themselves in the forum, and trusting to the protection 
of their sex, addressed the Triumvirs in very forcible language, 
and succeeded in obtaining from them an abatement of the great- 

327 « Hunc ego notum non habui." Va- signifies either 'over the Germans,' or 

lerius Maximus, IX. 5. ' over their brothers.' " 

82» Appian, 31, Velleius Paterculus, 230 Appian, 31. 

II. 67. 231 Valerius Maximus, VI. 2. 

829 "The consuls are triumphing, not 232 Appian, IV. 32, et seq. Valerius 

over the Gauls, but ' de Germanis,' which Maximus, VIII. 3. 



418 REFLECTIONS ON THE PROSCRIPTION. 

est part of the tax which it had been intended to raise. But as 
the men could not utter their complaints with equal safety, they 
were condemned to make up for this deficiency. Every person, of 
what rank or condition soever, who was possessed of property to 
the amount of more than 400,000 h. s., or about 3200Z.,'^^^ was 
required to furnish a loan of two per cent, upon all that he was 
worth, and at the same time to pay the value of a year's income 
as a tax for the immediate expenses of the war. 

But the cruelty and rapacity of the Triumvirs themselves, 
Crimes of the soldiers g^cat as they wcrc, might yct have been satisfied 
and others. i^y g^ ^^^uy uiurdcrs and confiscations as we have 

already recorded. A wider and almost boundless scene of misery 
was opened by the infinite vexations, robberies, and violences of 
every kind which were committed by the army at large f^* when 
every soldier gratified his passions without scruple, and the Tri- 
umvirs dared not refuse to their instruments that same license of 
wickedness which they were themselves so largely enjoying. 
The example of the soldiers was followed by numerous bands of 
slaves and other low persons, who took advantage of the general 
confusion to plunder and to murder in their turn, and often as- 
sumed the. disguise of soldiers to insure to themselves impunity. 
But as their resentment was not dreaded, their disorders were 
more speedily repressed ; orders were given by the Triumvirs to 
punish those who committed unauthorized acts of violence ; and 
as the soldiers were too formidable to be restrained, the inferior 
malefactors were the only sufierers ; and of these last, several 
were seized and crucified. 

Although no previous provocation, nor any prospect of future 
Reflections on the bcucfits to the commonwcalth, could justify in any 
proscription. dcgrce SO atrocious a massacre, yet its wickedness 

becomes still more heightened when we consider the only pleas 
which its perpetrators could urge in their defence, and the utter self- 
ishness of the motives by which they were actuated. Their great 
pretence was to revenge the murder of Caesar ; an act the guilt of 
which was confined to about sixty individuals, scarcely any of 
whom were among the victims of the present proscription. Thou- 
sands who had no share in his death, might very justly have re- 
joiced in the eff'ects of it, in the dissolution of a tyrannical power, 
and the restoration of the lawful constitution ; and after the mur- 
der had been perpetrated, the best course which could be follow- 
ed was that which the senate actually adopted on the motion of 
Cicero, to decree a general amnesty for the past, and to resume 
the usual form of the government, as if Caesar's usurpation had 
never interrupted it. And on this principle the more respectable 
of Caesar's friends, such as Hirtius and Pansa, acted ; who, while 

233 Appian,34. 234 Appian, 35. 



REFLECTIONS ON THE PROSCRIPTION. 419 

openly lamenting and condemning his murder, thought that it ill 
became them to renew the civil war for the purpose of revenging 
it ; but that it was the duty of all good citizens to uphold that old 
constitution of their country which was now, by whatever means, 
restored ; especially as all the beneficial effects of the late revolution 
were still maintained, in the extension of the privileges of citizen- 
ship to a great number of foreigners, and the elevation of many in- 
dividuals of humble birth to the enjoyment of wealth and honours. 
But Antonius and Lepidus wishing to continue the system of 
military usurpation, and having been deservedly declared public 
enemies, were anxious to exterminate all those who were zeal- 
ously attached to the constitution of their country ; while Augus- 
tus, hoping to inherit his uncle's sovereignty as well as his name 
and private fortune, and animated besides with that inveteracy 
which men naturally feel against a cause which they have de- 
serted and betrayed, longed to destroy, if possible, the whole of 
the aristocratical party, that his way to the throne might be clear- 
ed from all impediments. His conduct, accordingly, was marked 
by peculiar traits of malignity and hard-heartedness. We have 
already mentioned that he himself was not known to spare a single 
victim of those whom he had marked out for death ; and he op- 
posed every inclination to clemency in his associates. When the 
proscription was ended, ^^^^ Lepidus, in a speech to the senate, 
made something of an apology for what was past, and said that 
henceforth such instances of severity would not be repeated, as 
enough of the guilty had been already punished ; but Augustus 
arose and added, that he had only closed the proscription as long 
as he thought proper, but without meaning to impose the least 
restriction on himself with regard to his future measures. When 
he thus spoke and acted, he was scarcely one-and-twenty years 
old. Had his whole after-life been marked by nothing but bene- 
fits to his country, no human judgment would be warranted in 
. attributing his altered conduct to any better motive than the ab- 
sence of temptation ; for he who had once plunged so deeply in 
wickedness, must ever be suspected of being ready to do the 
same again if his interests required it, unless he could give posi- 
tive proof that he regarded his former crimes with remorse and 
abhorrence. 

Whilst Italy was overwhelmed by these calamities,^^® three 
neighbouring countries afforded a secure refuge to The proscribed are 

,, ", » r, •! T I 1 1 sheltered in Greece, 

all those of the proscribed who were happy enough Africa, and siciiy. 
to reach them. Many accordingly escaped to M. Brutus in Mace- 
donia, and to Gl. Cornificius in Africa ; but a still greater num- 
ber fled to Sicily, where Sex. Pompeius, in a manner worthy of 
his name, was exercising the most unwearied benevolence towards 

«3S Suetonius, in Augusto, 27. 236 Appian, IV. 36. 



420 SEX. POMPEIUS IN SICILY. 

all of his persecuted countrymen to whom he had the means of 
Sex. pomreius re- extending it. We havo already mentioned, that af- 

ceives an extensive , iiii iijj' i-i ^ i^i 

nava) command from ter he had Deeu recalled Irom banishment, and the 

the senate, and occu- ^ii ^ j ^ i- ^^,i. 

pies Sicily. senate had resolved to pay hmi out oi the treasury 

the value of his father's property, he remained for some time at 
Massilia, waiting to see the issue of the campaign at Mutina ; and 
unable to take the active part in it which he wished, because 
Caesar's veterans, who were serving under Hirtius, Pansa, and 
Augustus, were unwilling to receive amongst them the son of 
Pompey. After the battle of Mutina, however, when the treason 
of Lepidus, and the suspected fidelity of Augustus, made it neces- 
sary for the senate to avail themselves of some more trustworthy 
aid, Sex. Pompeius was appointed to the general command of the 
naval forces of the commonwealth,"^ with an authority on every 
part of the coast, which, like that granted to his father in the war 
with the Cilician pirates, extended over the whole country within 
a certain distance from the sea. He had retained at Massilia part 
of the fleet which had belonged to him in Spain ; and having 
speedily increased it after he had received his commission from 
the senate, he sailed to Sicily, deeming that island a favourable 
situation for his head-quarters, and the whole of it, according to 
the tenour of his appointment, being properly included within 
the limits of his authority. Sicily was at that time held by A. 
Pompeius Bithynicus, who had received the government of it 
from Caesar ; but it was occupied, after some resistance, by Sex. 
Pompeius, and when the proscription began, he was in complete 
His active benevo- posscssiou of it. He instautly ordered his ships 
scrufed." ^ *'"'" and smaller vessels to cruise along the coasts of 
Italy,^^^ to intimate their presence by every possible signal, and 
to receive on board every one who applied to them for protection. 
To tempt the avarice of the soldiers employed in the massacres, 
he offered to each individual who should preserve any proscribed 
person, double the sum which the Triumvirs gave for his murder. 
To those who reached Sicily, he offered every consolation and re- 
lief in his power, supplying them with clothing and other articles 
of which they stood in need, and conferring on those of higher 
rank amongst them some command in his army or navy. Nor 
did he ever afterwards, from any selfish consideration, abandon 
them ; but when he concluded his treaty with Antonius and 
Augustus, he expressly stipulated that all who had fled to him 
at the time of the proscription, should be allowed to return to their 
homes in perfect safety. It is delightful to refresh ourselves for a 
moment with a picture of power actively exerted for objects of 
benevolence : and to those who revere the memory of Pompey the 

237 Velleiu3 Paterculus, II. 72, 73. edit. 238 Appian, IV. 36. Velleius Patercu- 
Oxon. 1693. Appian, IV. 84. Livy, lus, II. 77. 
Epitome, CXXIII. 



THE TRIUMVIRS OBTAIN POSSESSION OF AFRICA. 43] 

Great, it is pleasing to think that as his conduct in the war against 
the pirates was a single instance of wisdom and humanity, amidst 
the cruelties of other Roman generals, so the virtues of his son 
afford the principal relief to that dismal scene of wickedness and 
misery which the party of his enemies were now exhibiting. 

In the midst of the horrors of the proscription, the year 711 
expired ; and although the whole actual power of the state was 
in the hands of the Triumvirs, they resolved, nevertheless, to 
preserve nominally the usual offices of the commonwealth ; and 
accordingly, M. Lepidus and L. Plancus were named as consuls 
for the new year. Lepidus was to remain at Rome,^^^ and super- 
intend the government of Italy ; whilst his two associates, Anto- 
nius and Augustus, were to undertake the management of the 
war against Brutus and Cassius in the east, and against Sex. 
Pompeius and Q,. Cornificius in Sicily and Africa. In Africa, 
indeed, the contest was speedily terminated in fa- The Triumvirs obta,„ 
vour of the Triumvirs by T. Sextius, one of their possession of Afnca. 
officers,^" assisted by the power of Arabio, one of the native 
princes of Mauritania. Arabio's father had taken part with Scipio 
and Juba in the former African war ; and had, on that account, 
been deprived of his dominions by Casar, and had seen them 
divided between Bogud, a Mauritanian prince in Ceesar's interest, 
and P. Sitius, the Roman exile, whose services to the cause of 
CsBsar, under very critical circumstances, have already been no- 
ticed. But about the time of Caesar's death, Arabio returned home 
from Spain, whither he had fled to join the sons of Pompey ; 
and by the aid of some African soldiers, who had been disciplined 
in their service, he expelled Bogud from his share of his father's 
territories, and procured the assassination of Sitius. The aristo- 
cratical party at Rome began to conceive hopes from this conduct 
of Arabio,*^^! and perhaps expected that he would support their 
cause with the same zeal which they had formerly found in Juba. 
But the repeated victories of Caesar had impressed Arabio with a 
deep sense of the utter hopelessness of the cause of the common- 
wealth ; and he chose rather to purchase a pardon for his treat- 
ment of Bogud and Sitius, by proving to the Triumvirs that he 
was disposed to exert in their favour the power which he had 
seized from the hands of their partisans. Accordingly, he so ef- 
fectually assisted T. Sextius, when the war broke out, that d. 
Cornificius was defeated and killed, the wreck of his party dis- 
persed, and the province of Africa became subject to Augustus 
without dispute, according to the terms of the agreement original- 
ly concluded between the Triumvirs. 

The contest in Sicily was not terminated so easily. Augustus 

839 Dion Cassius, XLVIT. 338. «« Cicero, ad Atticum, XV. epist. XVII. 

2*" Appian, IV. 53, et seq. Arabioni de Sitio nihil irascor. 



422 PROGRESS OF BRUTUS AND CASSIUS IN THE EAST. 

They attack Sicily ^as eager to gain the island, because the usual sup- 
without success. pUes of com which it sent to the Roman market 
were now interrupted ; and the horrors of a scarcity were thus 
added to the accumulated miseries under which Italy was suffer- 
ing. But Q,. Salvidienus, one of Augustus's principal officers,'^^^ 
was repulsed by the fleet of Sex. Pompeius, when attempting to 
cover the passage of troops from Rhegium to the opposite shore ; 
and the naval and military forces of the Triumvirs were all re- 
quired immediately after in another quarter, to stop the progress 
of Brutus and Cassius in the east. 

Since the defeat and death of Dolabella at Laodicea, which 
Progress of Brutus and sccms to havo taken placc about the end of June, 
Cassius in the east. j^-^ jj^g summcr of the year 711, Cassius had been 
engaged in an obstinate, but at last successful, contest with those 
cities and countries of Asia Minor which had manifested their at- 
tachment to the cause of his enemy. After the fall of Laodicea, 
he had hoped to make himself master of Egypt, in return for the 
succours which Cleopatra had sent to Dolabella ; but being 
pressed, it is said, by messages from Brutus, ^^^^ j^e abandoned his 
enterprise, and began to return towards the province of Asia. On 
his way he levied a severe contribution upon the inhabitants of 
Tarsus,*^^^ and having enriched himself considerably, by this and 
many similar exactions, he met Brutus at Smyrna, as far as ap- 
pears, about the middle of the winter.^^^ Brutus had lately crossed 
over with his army from Macedonia, having constantly refused to 
listen to the pressing exhortations of Cicero and Decimus Brutus, 
who had urged him to come to the assistance of the common- 
wealth in Italy, before the treason of Augustus had openly mani- 
fested itself. We cannot now decide whether he acted wisely or 
timidly in adopting a different line of conduct ; but it seems im- 
possible not to condemn the result of his subsequent meeting with 
Cassius at Smyrna, if the writers, whom we are now reduced to 
follow, have put us at all in possession of the real circumstances 
of the case, or of the grounds of the resolution which was adopted. 
Cassius,^^^ it is said, insisted on the difficulties with which the 
Triumvirs were actually surrounded at Rome ; on their want of 
money, and on the delay which Sex, Pompeius must necessarily 
occasion them by his occupation of Sicily ; and, therefore, he 
urged the policy of employing the present moments in the reduc- 
tion of Rhodes and Lycia, which were warmly attached to the 
party of the Triumvirs, and might effect a formidable diversion 
in the rear if left unsubdued, while Brutus and himself were ad- 

212 Livy, Epitome, CXXIII. Appian, 245 Pluiarch, in Bruto, 28. Livv, Epit- 

IV. 85. ome.CXXII. 

243 Plutarch, in Bruto, 28. Appian, IV. 246 Dion Cassius, XL VII. 346. Appian, 
63. IV. 65. 

244 Dion Cassius, XLVII. 345. 



THE TRIUMVIRS OCCUPY MACEDONIA. 433 

vancing into Greece. No reasoning could be more opposite to the 
soundest principles of policy and military conduct ; and if Cassius 
really argued in such a manner, he was a very unequal antago- 
nist to generals who had been trained like Antonius in the school 
of Caesar. The event was a memorable lesson on the folly of 
wasting time in war upon inferior objects, and of pecking at the 
extremities of an enemy's power, instead of striking at the heart. 
Rhodes and Lycia, indeed, were successively conquered f" but 
the power of the Triumvirs was in the mean time consolidated, 
their armies were in a condition to take the field, and they them- 
selves, acting in the true spirit of Caesar's system, were prepared 
to anticipate attack, and had already despatched a force into Ma- 
cedonia, to fix the seat of war in the territories of their adversa- 
ries instead of in their own. 

This first division of the army of the Triumvirs was com- 
manded by C. Norbanus and Decidius Saxa.^*^ Of The Triumvirs send 
the former we can find nothing recorded, but if he Macedonia agS 
were of the family of that C. Norbanus who was *''^™- 
proscribed by Sylla, and who killed himself at Rhodes, that he 
might not fall into the hands of his enemies, his connexion with 
the party of the Triumvirs was natural. Decidius Saxa was a 
Spaniard,^^^ on whom Caesar had conferred the rights of Roman 
citizenship, and had afterwards caused him to be named one of 
the tribunes. He was with Antonius during the siege of Mutina, 
and is frequently mentioned by Cicero in his philippics as one of 
his principal adherents. At the time when Saxa and Norbanus 
crossed over into Greece, there was no enemy to obstruct their pro- 
gress either by land or sea, for both the fleets and armies of Brutus 
and Cassius were still employed in Asia. They advanced, there- 
fore, through Macedonia, till they approached Philippi, a place 
favourably situated for intercepting the march of an army from 
the Hellespont towards Greece. The great plain of the Strymon 
is bounded on the east by a branch of the mountains known by 
the name of Pangaeusj^^" and which, running to the southward 
nearly at right angles with the general course of the chain, is only 
separated from the sea by a tract of low and marshy ground, over 
which there was, at this time, no practicable road. The road, 
therefore, from the Hellespont to Macedonia, crossed this project- 
ing branch of Pangaeus by two mountain passes, before it descend- 
ed into the plain of the Strymon ; and a little to the westward of 
the passes it came to the city of Philippi, which was itself situated 
on one of the lower points of the mountain range, near the head 
of a small stream which flowed to the westward, through the 
plain, to join the Strymon. The two passes to the eastward of 

247 Velleius Paterculus, II. 69. «« Cicero, Philippic. XL 5 ; and XIII. 

«8 Dion Cassius, XL VII. 347. 13 . 

850 Dion Cassius, 348. Appian,IV. 105. 
28 



424 BRUTUS AND CASSIUS ADVANCE TO PHILIPPI. 

Philippi were occupied by Norbanus and Saxa ; and in this posi- 
tion they hoped to check the march of the enemy, if he should re- 
turn from Asia to attack them, until they could be supported by 
Antonius himself, who was to join them as soon as possible with 
the rest of his army from Italy. 

Brutus and Cassius having effected the conquest of Rhodes and 
Brutus and cassius of Lycia, met again at Sardis,^^' and thence re- 
advance to PhUippi. solved to carry their united forces into Europe. 
They were aware that a part of the army of the Triumvirs had 
already arrived in Macedonia, but they trusted, by the superiority 
of their naval force, to prevent the passage of the remainder ; and 
for this purpose, L. Statins Murcus was sent with a considerable 
squadron to cruise off Brundusium,^^'^ exactly as Pompey's naval 
officer.! had done before in the war with Csesar. Meanwhile they 
themselves crossed the Hellespont, and advanced towards Philippi. 
And here again the impossibility of defending a mountain line of 
considerable length, against a superior enemy, was fully proved. 

The positions of Norbanus and Saxa were impregnable in front ; 
but one of the Thracian chiefs pointed out a way over the moun- 
tains to the northward of the passeSj^^^ by which the army of 
Brutus and Cassius crossed without opposition, after a laborious 
march of three days through the woods, and appearing suddenly 
on the flank of Saxa and Norbanus, obliged them to retreat with 
.great expedition, and to fall back across the plain of the Strymon, 
as far as Amphipolis. Brutus and Cassius then formed their re- 
spective camps on two hills, distant somewhat less than a mile 
from one another, and about a mile and a half to the westward of 
Philippi. Immediately to the south, or left of their position, the 
marsh began, and extended from thence to the sea. On their 
right were the mountains, the regular passes being probably 
covered by their own position, while they were likely to keep a 
watchful eye upon the more diflicult track by which they had 
themselves effected their passage. 

The space between their two camps was secured by fortifica- 
tions connecting the two hills with each another ; their fleet was 
stationed in the neighbouring harbour of Neapolis to co-operate 
with them ; and their magazines of every kind were placed in 
perfect safety in the island of Thasos, which lay just opposite to 
that part of the coast at an inconsiderable distance from the main 
land. Thus situated, and having all the resources of Asia in their 
rear, while their enemy's communications with Italy and the 
western provinces would be, as they hoped, coij^stantly intercept- 
ed by the fleets of Sex. Pompeius and L. Murcus, they trusted to 
follow successfully the system which Pompey, under similar cir- 

S5» Plutarch, in Bruto, 34. 2S3 Appian, IV. 103, 104. 

252 Dion Cassius, 348. Appian, 88. 



ANTONIUS AND AUGUSTUS AT EPIRUS. 435 

cumstances, had been unwisely induced to abandon, and to bring 
the war to a triumphant end, without exposing themselves to the 
hazard of a battle. 

But Antonius effected his passage from Brundusium with the 
same success which had attended him before in the Antonius and Augus- 

, -, - . tu3 arrive inMacedo- 

very same place, and under the same circumstances, ma to oppose them. 
when he commanded the rear division of Caesar's army, and joined 
his general on the coast of Epirus in spite of all the fleets of Pom- 
pey. After he had been blockaded for some time by L. Murcus, 
he sent to Augustus, who was then at Rhegium, requesting him 
to suspend his preparations against Sicily, and to employ his 
naval force in driving off the blockading squadron from Brundu- 
sium. '^^^ It does not appear, however, that the fleet which Au- 
gustus could spare for this service, was at all able to meet that of 
L. Murcus in battle. But the apprehension of being hemmed in in 
the narrow space between Brundusium and the little island which 
lay off the harbour's mouth, induced L. Murcus to draw off his 
ships, and to allow Augustus to join Antonius without opposition. 
The legions were then embarked on board of vessels such as were 
usually employed in commerce, and which were worked only by 
sails, while an escort of ships of war accompanied them, to be 
sacrificed, if needful, to the superior force of the enemy, in the 
hope that their resistance might at least allow the transports time 
to escape. But the wind, for some days, happened to blow so 
freshly, that the transports were carried across with full sails, at 
a rate which rendered it impossible for the enemy's ships of war, 
worked only with oars, to overtake them ; and in this manner, we 
are told, Antonius and Augustus landed the main body of their 
army on the coast of Epirus without loss. Antonius instantly 
hastened to the support of Saxa and Norbanus, with an activity 
which rivalled that of his old commander, and which far exceeded, 
as we are told, all the calculations of his opponents.'^" We might 
wonder, indeed, why Brutus and Cassius had not followed upon 
Saxa and Norbanus in their retreat from Philippi, instead of allow- 
ing them quietly to strengthen themselves on the Strymon ; but it is 
idle to attempt to give the military history of a campaign, when 
the writers whom we are obliged to follow have not recorded the 
date of any one operation or movement on either side. It only 
appears, that as soon as Antonius arrived at Amphipolis,''^^ he in- 
stantly moved forwards with his whole army, and encamped near 
Philippi, within a short distance from the enemy ; and that here 
he was in a short time joined by Augustus, who on his first land- 
ing had remained at Dyrrhachium on account of illness, but not 
choosing to be absent from the scene of action at so critical a 

254 Appian, 86. 25« Appian, IV. 107. Dion Cagsius, 

255 Plutarch, in Bruto, 38, 349. 



426 FIRST ACTION AT PHILIPPf. 

moment, he hastened to follow his troops, as soon as he heard of 
the position of the two armies, and arrived in the camp while he 
was still too weak to discharge the most active duties of a general. 
In the present contest, as in that between Pompey and Caesar, 
First action at Philip- the army of the constitutional party was the more 
pi. Autumn of 712. numerous, their naval superiority was undoubted, 
and their resources were so ample, that they could easily afford 
to protract the war. But on the side of the Triumvirs there were 
generals and officers trained in the school of Caesar ; these were 
the remains of his invincible veterans r and even the newly-raised 
soldiers, disciplined by the same commanders, and having before 
their eyes in their more experienced comrades such a perfect pat- 
tern of military excellence, were likely to emulate the good con- 
duct of the veterans themselves. Antonius, therefore, was eager 
to bring on a general action, and finding thai the enemy 
remained immovable within his lines, he endeavoured to make 
opportunities of fighting, by carrying a road through the marsh 
on the left of Cassius's camp, as if he designed to turn his posi- 
tion.'^^^ It appears that an irregular engagement was at last the 
consequence of these operations ; for the details of which we can 
best rely on the narrative of Plutarch, as he appears to have copied 
from the memoirs of M. Messala, an officer of the highest rank in 
the constitutional army, next to Brutus and Cassius. According, 
then, to the statement of Messala, the left of the Triumvirs' army, 
which was the part commanded by Augustus, was drawn out in or- 
der of battle in front of its camp, to effect a diversion in favour of An- 
tonius. But the troops of Brutus making a sudden and unexpected 
sally, Messala himself, with a part of the arm}?-, turned the left 
flank of the enemy, pushed forwards at once to their camp, and 
carried it with little opposition ; while Brutus, assailing them at 
the same time in front, broke them with great slaughter, and 
chased them back to their camp, which was already in Messala's 
possession. Meanwhile the centre of the Triumvirs' army, ob- 
serving that the troops of Cassius had taken no part in the action, 
passed by the left flank of the victorious legions of Brutus, and 
attacked the left wing of the constitutional army, commanded by 
Cassius. Antonius himself, on the extreme right of his own army, 
was at the same time engaged in the marsh, in an attempt to take 
the cross wall which Cassius had carried out of his own camp, 
in order to intercept the projected road of the enemy. It appears 
that the veteran legions were all in that part of the army com- 
manded by Brutus, and that the troops of Cassius Avere probably 
very unfit to maintain a contest with the disciplined soldiers of 
the Triumvirs. In spite, therefore, of all the efforts of their gen- 
eral, they were easily routed ; their cavalry, instead of covering 

*' Appian, 109, et seq. 



BLUNDER AND DEATH OP CASSroS. 437 

the infantry, fled in disorder towards the sea 5 and the enemy- 
pursuing his advantage, not only carried the cross wall in the 
marsh, but attacked and took the camp of Cassius. The prospect 
over the field was so obscured, it is said, by clouds of dust, that 
the parts of both armies which were victorious, were not aware 
of the fortune of their friends in the other wing ; and when they 
were informed of it, both Brutus and Antonius returned to their 
own respective camps, and both parties, on the following morning, 
remained in the same position which they had occupied before 
the action. But the hasty despair of Cassius gave to a battle, 
which was otherwise a doubtful success, all the appearances, and 
some of the consequences, of a total defeat of the constitutional 
army. When he saw his own legions routed,*^^^ he supposed that all 
was lost, and could scarcely be prevailed on to despatch an officer 
to the other part of the field to learn what was the fate of Bruties. 
The officer, however, was sent, and Cassius, it is said, attended 
by one of his freed men, watched his progress for a time from a hill- 
on which he had taken refuge. He soon saw him met by a party 
of cavalry ; then he heard a loud shout of triumph, and presently 
observed that the cavalry continued to advance towards the spot 
where he was, and that his officer was forming one of their com- 
pany. Concluding from this that the horsemen belonged to the 
enemy, that his officer was their prisoner, or was, perhaps, now 
guiding them to the place where they might find his general, 
Cassius conjured his freedman to save him from falling into their 
hands, and instantly to kill him. The freedman obeyed, and 
fled ; and presently after, the officer arrived on the 
hill, followed by the horsemen whom Brutus had ^^ ° ^^'""' 
sent to announce his success to his colleague, and who, on meet- 
ing the messenger despatched by Cassius, had shouted aloud to an- 
nounce their victory, and turned him back with them, to acquaint 
his general with the happy tidings. It is added, that when he 
saw the body of Cassius lying on the ground, he immediately 
stabbed himself, and fell dead beside it. 

The body of the deceased general was sent by Brutus to be 
buried privately at Thasos, lest the performance of the funeral 
solemnities in sight of the army should communicate some dis- 
couragement to the soldiers. Brutus himself resolved still, as be- 
fore, to act on the defensive,^^^ and hoped that the enemy would 
soon be obliged to retreat from want of provisions. But a system 
which even Pompey could not steadily persevere in, was found 
much more impracticable now. The soldiers, and even the su- 
perior officers, grew impatient of the taunts which the enemy 
continually threw out against them ; while the enemy were more 

258 Plutarch, in Bruto, 43. Appian, ^s Dion Cassius, XLVII. 354, 355. 
113. Dion Cassius, 354. Appian, IV. 123, et seq. 



428 SECOND ACTION AT PHILIPPI. 

eager than ever to fight, as their situation was greatly compro- 
mised by a heavy disaster recently sustained in the Ionian Gulf. 
Since Antonius and Augustus had effected their passage, L. Mur- 
cus had been reinforced by a numerous squadron under the com- 
mand of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the son of that Domitius who 
had been one of the most violent enemies of Csesar, and who was 
himself charged, whether truly or not, with having been one of 
CsBsar's assassins. With his fleet thus strengthened, Murcus soon 
after fell in with a large force of soldiers which Cn. Domitius Cal- 
vinus was carrying over in transports, escorted only by a few 
ships of war, to reinforce the army of the Triumvirs.'^^" The 
weather was now as favourable to Murcus as it had been before 
adverse ; for the wind suddenly dropped, and the transports were 
left becalmed and perfectly helpless, while the enemy's ships of 
war could use their oars with increased facility in the smooth 
water. ' After an obstinate resistance the whole of the transports 
were taken, burnt, or dispersed ; and a force which had consisted 
of two legions, and a praetorian cohort of two thousand men, be- 
sides a numerous body of cavalry, was thus almost entirely de- 
stroyed. But these successes could not decide the general issue of 
the war. Brutus was at last induced, as Pompey had been before 
him, to yield to the wishes of his army ; for latterly several de- 
sertions to the enemy had taken place,*^" and he feared that his 
troops, the best of which had formerly served under Csesar, might 
be persuaded, if longer suffered to remain inactive, to join the 
standard of the friend and adopted son of their old general. Ac- 
cordingly he drew out his legions in order of battle, and was 
cheerfully met by the enemy, who already began to suffer serious 
inconvenience from want of provisions. The battle of Philippi 
Second battle of was marked, according to our accounts, by no dis- 
phiiippi. play of generalship on either side ; but after some 

hours of close combat, the superior discipline of the Triumvirs' 
army prevailed, and the soldiers of Brutus first began slowly to 
give ground, and then were totally routed. Brutus himself,"* 
being cut off from his camp, fled to a small glen or deep dell, at 
no great distance from the field of battle, through which a stream 
flowed between deep banks, occasionally covered with wood, and 
sometimes consisting of bare cliffs. He was accompanied by 
several of his friends, and amongst the rest by P. Volumnius, who 
from his love of literature had long lived on terms of familiarity 
with Brutus, and whose account of the close of his friend's life 
Plutarch appears to have followed as his principal authority. We 
may venture then to give the following particulars, as resting on 
the testimony of one who was present at the scene which he de- 
scribes. 

s*" Appian, 115. »2 Plutarch, in Bruto, 51, et seq. 

»' Dion Cassius, XLVII. 355. 



SECOND ACTION AT PHILIPPI. 439 

It was already dark when Brutus seated himself on a large 
piece of rock in^the narrow valley, and looking up to the sky, 
which was bright with stars, he repeated two lines from Greek 
poets, one of which, from the Medea of Euripides, Volumnius still 
remembered when he wrote his narrative, and has recorded it. 
It was an imprecation, " that Jove would not forget to punish the 
author of all this misery."^^^ He was full of the thought of the 
many friends who had already fallen in the battle ; and he par- 
ticularly lamented the loss of Labeo, who had been one of his 
lieutenants, and of 0. Flavius, his master of the works, who had 
been long one of his intimate friends.^" Shortly afterwards he 
began to express his hopes that the number of his soldiers who 
had fallen could not be great, upon which Statyllius, one of his 
companions, engaged to make his way to the camp, to send up a 
fire signal from thence, if he found it still in the possession of 
their own troops, and then to return to Brutus. He went accord- 
ingly, and after a certain interval the fire signal was observed to 
be made ; but Statyllius did not return, so that Brutus rightly 
conjectured that he had fallen in with some of the enemy on his 
way back, and had perished by their hands. This circumstance 
showed that it would not be easy to regain the camp, or to rally 
any part of the army that might have taken refuge in its neigh- 
bourhood. Accordingly, as the night wore away, Brutus was 
seen to whisper something successively to two of his attendants, 
and his words were observed to draw tears from those to whom 
they were addressed. He then spoke in Greek to P. Volumnius 
himself; reminded him of the studies which they had shared to- 
gether ; and plainly requested him to lend Him his assistance in 
killing himself. But Volumnius refusing to comply, and some 
one of the party observing that it would not be safe to remain any 
longer where they were, Brutus arose from his seat and said : 
" Yes, indeed, we must go hence ; but it must be with our hands, 
and not with our feet." He then, with a cheerful countenance, 
shook hands successively with every one present, and declared to 
them the happiness it gave him to think that none of his friends 
had proved false to him. On his country's account he might 
justly, he said, complain of the cruelty of fortune ; but for him- 
self, he was even at that moment a happier man than the con- 
querors, inasmuch as he should leave behind him a character for 
goodness which neither their arms nor their treasures would ever 
procure for them. In conclusion, he conjured all his friends to 
provide for their own safety ; and having said thus much, he left 
them, with only two attendants, and retired to some distance out 
of their sight. There, according to the general report, Strato, 

253 Zei) iiri Xddoi ere roivS' Si aiTios KaKdv. ^* See Cornel. Nep. in Attxo, 8. 
Med. 333. 



430 DEATH OP BRUTUS. 

who was one of those who still remained with him, and who had 
been used to practise declamation with him, and to take part in 
his studies in oratory, yielded at last to his repeated requests, and 
Death of Brutus. tuming away his face, held out towards him the 
point of his sword, Brutus having placed it exactly at his heart, 
threw himself upon it and expired immediately. 

Meantime, whatever was the numerical loss of the constitu- 
tional army, many citizens of the noblest names in Rome had al- 
ready fallen. M. Cato, the son of M. Cato of Utica, and L. Lu- 
cuUus, the son of the conqueror of Tigranes, are particularly 
mentioned f^^ while Q,, Hortensius, the son of the famous orator 
of that name, M. Favonius, so long known as the friend and imi- 
tator of Cato,^^8 and M. Varro, who had been quaestor under 
Brutus in Cisalpine Gaul, and a relation probably of that M. Varro 
who was reputed the most learned of the Romans, had fallen into 
the hands of the enemy. When these prisoners were brought be- 
fore the Triumvirs, they addressed Antonius with respect as an 
honourable adversary,^®'' but directed against Augustus the bitter- 
est reproaches ; as, in addition to the perfidy and cruelty which 
he had before exhibited, he had been guilty of some atrocious in- 
stances of cold-blooded barbarity to some other captives who had 
fallen into his power in the last battle. Yet Antonius was not 
more merciful to them than his colleague, and Hortensius, Varro, 
and Favonius were all put to death. To complete the destruc- 
tion of the aristocratical party, L. Livius Drusus, the father of the 
future wife of Augustus, killed himself in his tent ; and Q,uintilius 
Varus, having arrayed himself in the insignia of the offices which 
he had borne, desired one of his freedmen to become his execu- 
tioner. 

The greatest part of the constitutional army rallied under the 
Dispersion of the aris- commaud of M. Mcssala and L. Bibulus, at a little 
tocraticai party. dlstaucc froui the field of battle, and was soon join- 
ed by several persons of distinction, who immediately after the 
action had taken refuge in the island of Thasos. Messala was 
called upon to become the leader of this last hope of the aristo- 
cratical party j*^^* but he wisely considered all further resistance 
as hopeless, and preferred to submit himself and all his troops to 
the Triumvirs, on a promise of full indemnity for them all. The 
magazines of Thasos were then surrendered ;'^^ and the victori- 
ous generals, being now in fact absolute masters of the empire, 
concluded a new agreement between themselves, in which, disre- 
garding Lepidus altogether, they made some new arrangements 
in the division of the provinces, and determined that Antonius, 
with the greater part of their army, should proceed into Asia, to 

2S5 Velleius Paterculus, II. 71. 268 Velleius Paterculus, II. 71. 

»8S Suetonius, in Augusto, 13. '^ Appian, IV. 136 ; V. 3. Dion Cas- 

267 Suetonius, in Augusto, 13. sius, XLVIII. 357, 358. 



AUGUSTUS RETURNS TO ITALY. 431 

organize that country, and to raise contributions in order to enable 
him to fulfil the promises which he had made to his soldiers ; 
while Augustus should return to Italy, to superintend the division 
of lands there, and to establish the veterans in the settlements 
which the^?- had been encouraged to expect. Meantime the offi- 
cers of Brutus and Cassius, who had been left behind by them in 
Asia, now fled to L. Murcus and Cn. Domitius, whose fleet still 
remained unsubdued. But the battle of Philippi produced an 
universal derangement of the constitutional party. L. Murcus,^''" 
with his squadron, joined Sex. Pompeius in Sicily, while Cn. 
Domitius acted for a time as an independent commander, and 
maintained his seamen, we must suppose, by forcible contributions 
raised upon the people of the sea coast, or by acts of piracy upon 
ships employed in commerce. 

In an evil hour for himself did Antonius turn his back upon 
Italy, and leave the immediate government of the Ausu^tus retu-ns to 
capital in the hands of his associate. Augustus, Iffe'^dfvisTonofiands 
still suffering from ill health,"* travelled slowly among his soldiers. 
on his way towards Rome ; whilst the population of Italy, who 
had already experienced his cruelty and rapacity, looked forwards 
with horror to the moment of his arrival, which would consign 
some of the finest districts of the peninsula to the occupation of 
a rapacious soldiery. How eagerly should we open the smallest 
volume of contemporary history, which might paint to us from 
the life the state of society in Italy, under the effects of this dread- 
ful revolution ! But not a single armalist of these times has 
reached posterity, aod we must find our way. as best we can, 
with no other guidance than that of the weak and ignorant Greeks 
of a later age, whose testimony we have so often found worthless. 

It was not till the spring of the following year that Augustus 
returned to Rome, and found P. Servilius and L. l. Antonius, the con- 
Antonius, the_ brother of the Triumvir, in posses- nyofTe' army. '''""" 
sion of the title of consuls. Antonius had been tribune three 
years before, and had then courted popularity by proposing 
divisions of land on a very extensive scale among the poorer citi- 
zens of Rome. He now saw a division on the eve of being made, 
which was to be still more extensive, and which was to benefit 
exclusively the officers and soldiers of the Triumvirs' army. So 
long as the aristocratical party was strong enough to excite 
jealousy, that union between the popular party and some am- 
bitious military leaders, which had first been observed in the coa- 
lition between Sulpicius and Marius, had continued for the most 
part unbroken ; but when the power of the senate was utterly 
destroyed, it was manifest to the most prejudiced of the popular 
leaders, that the liberties of Rome were at least as endangered by 

*™ Velleius Paterculus, 11. 72. »" Dion Cassius, XL VIII. 358. 



432 WAR BETWEEN L. ANTONIUS AND AUGUSTUS. 

the usurpation of the army, as they had ever heen by the oppres- 
sion of the rich nobihty ; and that large proportion of citizens 
who, with all their turbulence and violence, were yet, in the main, 
sincerely attached to their country, perceived that all their hopes 
of a benejficial change in the political system of the empire were 
about to be crushed in a manner that seemed likely to render them 
for ever desperate. Besides, there were considerations of imme- 
diate personal interest which aroused the inhabitants of Italy in 
general against the Triumvirs. Their cities and their lands were 
to be torn from them, merely on the plea that it was necessary to 
fulfil the promises made by the generals to their army. If the 
people had been guilty of any crime in supporting the government 
against the rebellion of M. Antonius, it was a crime in which 
Augustus himself had shared ; and again, since the formation of 
the Triumvirate, Italy had suffered much from the proscription 
on the one hand, and from the loss of its ordinary supplies of 
foreign corn on the other, but had submitted to all its calamities 
without resistance. Under these circumstances, the contest which 
took place, nominally between Augustus and L. Antonius, may be 
looked upon in reality as a struggle between the people of Italy 
and the army ; as the last effort made in defence of liberty and 
property against a military despotism. It is said, that L. Anto- 
nius and his sister-in-law, Fulvia, who was the partner of all his 
measures, at first quarrelled with Augustus, because they wished 
to have their share in the proposed distribution of lands to the 
soldiery \^^^ and, also, that the promised rewards should be given 
in the name of M. Antonius as well as in that of Augustus. But 
the general clamours which prevailed throughout Italy against 
the spoliation of property, induced L. Antonius to espouse a no- 
bler cause and to oppose altogether the pretensions of the army. 
In Rome itself, '^^^ and in all the principal towns of the peninsula, 
there were frequent and bloody engagements between the soldiers 
and citizens, which were attended with the destruction of a great 
number of houses ; and as the pressure of scarcity began to be 
severely felt from the total cessation of all supplies from Sicily, 
robberies and disorders of every kind became common, till at last 
the shops in Rome were shut up, and the ordinary magistrates of 
the city, utterly unable to preserve tranquillity, gave up their 
offices, we are told, to pacify the people, who were indignant at 
seeing the semblance of government retained, when it had lost 
all its power of affording protection. 

D. Antonius now openly professed his opposition to the illegal 
War between L. An- powcr of the triumviratc,'^"^ as well as the spolia- 
tonius and Augustus, tiou of thc cltlcs and lauds of Italy. His brother, 

»" Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 359. Ap- "' Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 362. Ap- 
pian, V. 14. plan, V. 18. 

"< Livy, Epit. CXXV. Appian, V. 30. 



L. ANTONIUS SURRENDERS AT PERUSIA. 433 

he said, was willing to resign the title of Triumvir, to see the law- 
ful authority of the consulship restored, and to receive himself, in 
his election to that office, the reward of the sacrifice which he 
should make to his country's good. All ranks of people joined the 
standard of opposition to the Triumvirate with equal eagerness f^ 
the nobihty and the commons, the patricians and equestrian order 
at Rome, as well as the inhabitants of all the cities of Italy, took 
up arms against Augustus, and the system of military tyranny of 
which he was the leader. He himself, leagued with his soldiers 
to support their mutual oppressions, was obliged to tolerate many 
acts of violence and disrespect to himself,'^^^ which his army, 
knowing their power, unscrupulously committed ; and in order to 
attach them to his service, he plundered even the temples, where- 
ever they were in his power, '^'''' and thus added still more to the 
odiousness of his cause. But on the other hand, in proportion as 
L. Antonius became more evidently the head of a party truly na- 
tional, so the feeling of the army in every part of the empire was 
more interested to assist Augustus. Asinius Pollio and P. Ven- 
tidius,'^''^ who were both warmly attached to M. Antonius, and 
who commanded such a force in Cisalpine Gaul as would have 
enabled them readily to turn the scale in favour of his brother, 
hesitated when he saw that his success was likely to put a stop 
universally to the overgrown greatness of the army ; and although 
they did not actually take part against him, yet they allowed Au- 
gustus and his lieutenants to shut him up in Perusia, without 
making any effort in his favour, when he advanced towards the 
frontiers of Cisalpine Gaul, relying on their co-operatien. Aban- 
doned thus to himself, and left to struggle against a veteran army, 
with only the feeble .support of an undisciplined and unwarlike 
population, L. Antonius could only defend himself l. Antonius is obliged 

i ^_, . -11 1 • • r 1 • • to surrender at Peru- 

in Perusia till the provisions of his garrison were sia. 
exhausted, and he was then obhged to submit to his adversary. 
He was himself dismissed in perfect safety, for it was not politic 
to exasperate M. Antonius at such a juncture by the execution of 
his brother ; his soldiers also were pardoned, at the intercession of 
their comrades in the service of Augustus ; but neither L. Anto- 
nius nor his troops were the chief objects of the conqueror's jeal- 
ousy and hatred ; and the true nature of the contest was shown 
by the choice of the victims who were marked out for destruction 
at the close of it. There were captured at Perusia a great num- 
ber of Roman citizens of distinction,^''' who had taken up arms 
for the restoration of their liberties and laws ; these Augustus put 
to death without remorse, and on this occasion dis- 
played again the same vile and unfeeling nature 

"5 Appian, V. 27. 29. 31. «« Appian, V. 32. 

«« Appian. V. 15, 16. "» Apiftan, V. 48. Suetonius, in Au- 

"'' Dion Cassius, XL VIII. 364. gusto, 15. Dion Cassias, XLVII. 365. 



434 PROSPECTS OF SEPARATION OP M. ANTONIUS AND AUGUSTUS. 

which he had shown in the whole course of his public life. 
Though he was only three and twenty years of age, he heard the 
prayers and excuses of his victims without the least emotion, 
answering every suppliant by a repetition of the words, " You 
must die ;" and to show that he considered his triumph as gained, 
not so much over L. Antonius as over the liberty of his country, 
he selected three hundred persons from among his prisoners, some 
of the rank of senators, and others of the equestrian order, and or- 
dered them all to be butchered on the ides of March, at an altar 
erected in honour of his uncle, Caesar. To the citizens of Perusia 
he acted with equal cruelty ; for they, in common with the people 
of the other Italian cities, had zealously entered into the war to 
save their property from military violence. He put to death all 
the magistrates of the town, and gave up the city to be plundered ; 
and in the confusion thus occasioned, it was set on fire, and burnt 
to the ground. 

Towards the close of the siege of Perusia, P. Ventidius and 
Appearances of a the Other officcrs who Commanded the forces be- 
M. Amonfus^and lougiug to M. Autouius lu Cisalpiue Gaul, made a 
the^oTpresifon"of sliow of marcliiug to the relief of their general's 
^ugustusan e iipother ; but their efforts were hardly more than 
nominal, and plainly showed that they did not enter sincerely 
into the quarrel. Yet the union between L. Antonius and the 
friends of the old constitution, seems to have brought about a tem- 
porary coalition between the remnants of the aristocratical party 
and the officers of M. Antonius himself; and thus Cn. Domitius, 
who still commanded in his own name a portion of the fleet which 
had belonged to Brutus and Cassius, and was cruizing with it in 
the Adriatic to intercept the communications between Italy and 
the opposite coasts of Tllyricum and Epirus, was now induced by 
Asinius Pollio,^^" to submit himself to the command of Antonius, 
on the assurance, probably, that Antonius was disposed to join 
with his brother in restoring the lawful government of the com- 
monwealth. And in the same spirit, when Julia,^^^ the mother of 
Antonius fled from Italy, after the success of Augustus at Perusia, 
she was received by Sex. Pompeius in Sicily, and treated by him 
with every possible attention and kindness. Amidst all the cruel- 
ties and profligacies of Antonius's life, some traits of generosity 
were recorded, which might lead men to believe, that he acted 
rather from personal resentment than from a deliberate design to 
enslave his country. Anecdotes in particular were told of his be- 
haviour after the battle of Philippi,'^^'^ which contrasted strongly 
with the moan and merciless cruelty of Augustus on the same oc- 
casion. It might not be impossible that the aflronts oflered to so 

**> Velleius Paterculus, II. 76. "* Valerius Maximus, V. 1. Plutarch, 

»• Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 366. in Bruto, 50. 



TOTAL OVERTHROW OF THE NATIONAL CAUSE IN ITALY. 435 

many of his near relations by his ambitious associate, that the ex- 
ample of his brother, and some sense of the innumerable miseries 
under which Rome and Italy were groaning, might at last awaken 
the better feelings of his nature, and urge him to atone, as far as 
possible, for the guilt of the proscription, by becoming now the 
restorer of his country's liberty. 

Meantime the war in Italy was brought rapidly to an end after 
the fall of Perusia. An armed force had taken the Total overthrow of 
field in Carapania,^^^ in defence of the common Jj!f|]^'^*'°"*'<=*"se.m 
cause of liberty and property, under the command of Tib. Claudius 
Nero, a man of the highest nobility. Ten years before this time 
he had been much valued as a young man by Cicero, and had 
nearly become his son-in-law f^* he had afterwards served under 
Csesar in Egypt, and had been by him created one of the ponti- 
fices -j"^^^ yet, after Csesar's death, he had supported the party of the 
aristocracy, though without taking a prominent share in the events 
of that period. He now, after the surrender of L. Antonius, en- 
deavoured to raise the slaves in Campania to swell his forces ; but 
failing in this attempt, he was obliged to fly to Sicily, accompa- 
nied by his wife, and by his son, a child of about two years of age. 
His wife was Livia Drusilla, who was shortly afterwards married 
to Augustus ; and his son was that Tiberius who in little more 
than fifty years from this period became the sovereign of the Ro- 
man empire. 

Such was the termination of this brief contest, which con- 
signed the people of Rome and of Italy to many centuries of help- 
less weakness. In this, more than in any other of the civil dis- 
sensions of the Romans, it was a direct struggle between the 
army and the nation ; and the triumph of the army, in which it 
ended, was a much more serious evil to the state, than the victo- 
ries and usurpations of any political party, or even than the ty- 
ranny of Csesar himself It committed henceforward the whole 
power of the empire to a mercenary standing army ; and reduced 
all the other classes of society to that state of conscious insignifi- 
cance in the government of their country, which most surely leads 
to the degradation of national and individual character. Litera- 
ture may flourish under such circumstances, and the physical 
comforts of mankind may suffer at times little diminution ; but 
the soul of civihzed society, the power and the will to take part 
in the administration of the great system of national government, 
to watch over and assist in the execution of the existing laws, 
and at the same time to observe their deficiencies, and propose 
their remedies ; the spirit of real liberty which distinguishes the 
citizen from the mere subject — this is totally destroyed ; and car- 

"3 Velleius Paterculus, II. 75. «8» Auctor de Bello Alexand. 25. 

*** Cicero, ad Atticum, VI. epist. VI. 



436 RETURN OF ANTONIUS TO ITALY. 

ries away with it that practical vigour of mind which, when dif- 
fused amidst the mass of the people, under the guidance of sound 
principles, is the greatest earthly blessing of which mankind are 
susceptible. The siege of Perusia, then, may be regarded as an 
event far more really disastrous to liberty than the battle of 
Philippi. 

After the victory of Augustus, the proposed distribution of 
Fate of the expelled lauds amoug tho soldicrs was probably carried into 

possessors of lands in ^g.^^^ .^^ ^^^^.^ ^^^^ ^^ j^^j^^ rpj^g OCCUplcrS of CS- 

tates or of farms, thus driven from their homes, sought, for the 
most part, we are told, an asylum in Sicily with Sex. Pompeius.^^s 
But great numbers wandered, it is probable, into the adjacent 
provinces,^^'' and there found settlements, we may conjecture, 
where their agricultural experience and industrious habits would 
make them valuable inhabitants. In this manner good may 
have arisen out of evil ; and the civihzation of Gaul and Spain, 
and that general dissemination of the Latin language which took 
place at so early a period in those countries, may have been ac- 
celerated by the desolation of Italy. There were others of the 
expelled Italians who repaired, it is likely, to Rome, and helped 
to increase the immense population of the capital ; for the inhab- 
itants of Rome were too important to be neglected ; and care was 
taken by the government to provide for their maintenance, and 
even for their enjoyments, while the country of Italy was suffered 
to remain in a state of misery. But at the actual moment of 
which we are now speaking, Rome herself was sharing in the 
common distress ; for the fleets of Sex. Pompeius still blockaded 
all the ports, and intercepted the supplies on which her subsist- 
ence depended. 

Meantime M. Antonius had been recalled from Asia by the 
Return of Antonius tidlugs of hostiHtics iu Italy, and it is said was 
to "*'>• induced actually to form an alliance with Sex. Pom- 

peius, in his dread of the ambition and ascendency of Augustus. 
On his arrival off Brundusium he found the gates of that city shut 
against him, and he accordingly laid siege to it ;^** while his 
alliance with Sex. Pompeius, and the accession of force which he 
had lately gained through the submission of Cn. Domitius, gave 
him the undisputed dominion of the sea. But we hear nothing 
of his entering into the views of his brother Lucius ; and his 
quarrel with Augustus now seems to have been of the same kind 

** Appian, V. 53. climate, and a less civilized country, which 

"'' The Mantuan farmer in Virgil, was in reality, we may suppose, the lot of 

speaks of his countrymen flying to Africa, many of the poet's neighbours and friends. 

to Scythia, and to Britain ; but these are *"* Dion Cassias, XL VIII. 373. Ap- 

only iiyperbolical expressions to denote plan, V. 56. 

that species of exile in a less favourable 



PEACE BETWEEN POMPEIUS AND THE TRIUMVIRS. 437 

with his final contest with him a few years later, a mere struggle 
for dominion between two military leaders, in which the nation 
had no other interest than as far as it would decide which should 
be sovereign. On the present occasion, however, the veteran sol- 
diers were strongly averse to a war between Csesar's oldest asso- 
ciate and his nephew, which would tend, perhaps, to raise a son 
of Pompey on the ruins of their common cause. Accordingly the 
mutual friends of the two generals endeavoured to bring about a 
reconciliation ; and C. Mecsenas was despatched by Augustus to 
Brundusium,^^^ together with L. Cocceius, a common friend to 
both parties, to settle all their differences. The death of Fulvia,^"" 
the wife of Antonius, which happened about this Peace of Brundusium. 
time, removed, it is said, one obstacle to peace, and uc. 713. 
suggested the plan of cementing the union of the Triumvirs by 
the marriage of Antonius with Octavia, the sister of Augustus. 
In other points it was agreed, that all the provinces eastward of 
the Ionian Gulf,^^^ should be held by Antonius, and those to the 
westward of the same boundary by Augustus ; that both the Tri- 
umvirs might equally raise recruits for their armies in Italy ; that 
Lepidus should be left in possession of Africa ; and that Antonius 
should afford no protection to Sex. Pompeius against Augustus. 

The peace of Brundusium was celebrated by both the Trium- 
virs with the ceremony of the smaller triumph or ovation f^^ and 
the marriage which had been agreed on between Antonius and 
Octavia was soon after concluded. The people of Rome,^^^ 
meanwhile, finding their usual supplies of provisions still inter- 
cepted by the fleets of Sex. Pompeius, were clamorous against 
the Triumvirs for not relieving them from this evil ; and Anto- 
nius, probably ashamed of having deserted Pompeius, was desi- 
rous of including him in the general peace. Accordingly, after 
some preparatory correspondence, the Triumvirs and Pompeius 
met at Misenum,'^'* on the coast of Campania, and there con- 
cluded a treaty, by which Pompeius was to hold p,,,, between the 
the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and the p"'™ e-u'g.^""^ ^^''• 
province of Achaia, for the same period as the Tri- u. c. 714. 
umvirs should retain the command of the other provinces of the 
empire. It was agreed, besides, that he should be allowed to 
hold the office of consul without appearing personally at Rome ; 
that he should be appointed a member of the college of augurs ; 
and that the sum of about 565,104?. should be given to him as a 

i** Horace, Sat. I. 5. Appian, V. 64. «»3 Dion Cassius, XL VIII. 375, 376. 

2*> Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 374. Plu- Velleius Paterculus, II. 77. 

tarch, in Antonio, 30- ^^* Velleius Paterculus, 11. 77. Dion 

'9' Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 374. Ap- Cassius, XL VIIL 378. Plutarch, in An- 

pian, 65. Plutarch, in Antonio, 30. tonic, 32. Appian, V. 72. 

*** Fasti Capitolini, apud Sigonium. 



438 RETURN OP THE PUBLIC QUIET. 

compensation for his father's property which had been confis- 
cated. Pompeius, on his part, was to withdraw his garrisons 
from all the ports which he occupied on the coasts of Italy ; he 
was not to add to the actual number of his ships, nor receive any 
deserters from the service of the Triumvirs ; and he was to allow 
the usual tribute of corn to be sent from his provinces to Rome, 
But the stipulation which reflected most honour on Pompeius, 
was that in which it was agreed that all persons who had fled 
from Italy during the proscription, should be allowed to return in 
perfect safety, and should recover a fourth part of their forfeited 
property ; that all others, who had any reason to dread the re- 
sentment of the Triumvirs, should enjoy a general amnesty ; and 
those whose property had been confiscated should receive back 
its full value. The assassins of Caesar were alone exempted ; 
but most of these probably had already perished, and Cn. Do- 
mitius, who had at least the reputation of belonging to their 
number, was not only freed from all personal danger by his 
previous submission to Antonius, but a few years afterwards 
was raised to the dignity of consul. In this manner Sex. Pom- 
peius earned the real glory of putting an end to the worst part of 
the miseries of the civil wars, and of closing that long course of 
banishments and forfeitures by which the late revolution had been 
accompanied. In the succeeding contests, the leaders of parties, 
with a few of their principal ofiicers, were all who suffeied on 
the vanquished side ; proscription lists were no more needed, and 
the old constitution having been already efiectually destroyed, 
there was no renewal of those scenes of general devastation 
which had marked the convulsions of its overthrow. Society 
began to settle in its new form, and to taste that tranquillity 
which, during the later years of the life of Augustus, was en- 
joyed so universally. 

We shall make no apology for passing briefly over the events of 
the eight following years which intervened between the peace 
concluded with Sex. Pompeius, and the final contest between 
Augustus and' Antonius. When we can copy the narrative of a 
good contemporary historian, the most ordinary times deserve 
attention ; but when we can only follow the compilations of 
writers of a distant age, from whom it is vain to expect a faithful 
picture of the physical condition of mankind, or of their opinions, 
feelings, and morals, during the period under review, there are 
many wars and intrigues which may be safely dismissed with 
only a bare outline of their origin and issue. Such, for instance, 
are the campaigns of P. Ventidius and of Antonius himself 
against the Parthians ; the last war between Augustus and Sex. 
Pompeius, and the deposition of Lepidus from that scanty share 
of dominion which he had till then been suffered to retain. 



WAR IN THE EASTERN PROVINCES. 439 

Before the battle of Philippi, Brutus and Cassius had de- 
spatched an oiRcer to the Parthian court^®^ to soh- ^^^^ ;„ ^^^ eastern 
cit the assistance of that power. The officer em- thians'overruTi^ly^rfa,' 
ployed on this mission was a son of T. Labienus, ciiicia, and Asia. 
of that general who alone in Caesar's army had remembered his 
duty to his country, and had left the standard under which he 
had gained so many laurels, as soon as it became dishonoured by 
the guilt of rebellion. His son, the younger Labienus, found the 
Parthian court unwilling to give him a decisive answer, and in 
this manner the time passed away, till Brutus and Cassius had 
perished, and the aristocratical party was utterly ruined. Labi- 
enus, foreseeing that his return to his own country was now 
hopeless, continued to remain in Parthia ; and when it was 
known that M. Antonius had abandoned all public business for 
the society of Cleopatra in Egypt, and that Augustus was en- 
grossed in Italy with the struggle between the army and the peo- 
ple, Labienus prevailed on the Parthian king to seize the favour- 
able moment and attack the Roman empire. A large Parthian 
army was intrusted to his guidance, and with this he suddenly 
invaded Syria. Many of the Roman troops in that province had 
served under Brutus and Cassius, and had passed under the 
standard of Antonius after the battle of Philippi ; and these now 
immediately joined Labienus. Thus strengthened, he was en- 
abled to give battle to Decidius Saxa, whom Antonius had made 
his lieutenant in Syria, and totally defeated him. The conquest 
of all Syria and Palestine, with the exception of the single city 
of Tyre, was the result of this victory; after which, Pacorus, the 
son of the Parthian king, remained in the conquered provinces 
with a part of the army, while Labienus, with the other part, 
advanced into Ciiicia. There was no force capable of resisting 
him, so that he not only occupied the whole of CiUcia, but attack- 
ed the province of Asia, obliged L. Plancus, the governor of the 
province, to retire to one of the islands of the ^gean, and made 
himself master of all the cities on the continent, except Stratoni- 
cea, which he besieged for a long time in vain. Yet the contest 
between Augustus and L. Antonius in Italy seemed of more 
urgent importance to M. Antonius than even the recovery of the 
eastern provinces ; and accordingly, as we have seen, he hasten- 
ed to return to Italy, and Labienus was left in the undisturbed 
possession of his conquests till after the conclusion of the treaty 
between the Triumvirs and Sex. Pompeius, in the year 714. 

Immediately after that treaty,'^'^ Antonius crossed over into 
Greece, and despatched P. Ventidius before him They are driven out 
into Asia, to attack Labienus. The fortune of that byp.venudiS^.^"^^** 

«9* Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 371, et seq. ^^^ Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 380. PIu- 
Velleius Paterculus, II. 78. Livy, Epito- tarch, in Antonio, 33. 
me, CXXVII. 

29 



440 RENEWAL OF THE WAR BETWEEJV 

officer was as rapid in its ebb as it had been in its flood ; he was 
surprised and driven out of the province of Asia almost without 
resistance ; then, having halted on the frontiers of Cilicia, and 
being reinforced by the Parthians, he was attacked by Ventidius^ 
and his army defeated and dispersed. He himself fled in dis- 
guise, but was discovered soon after, and, as it seems, put to 
death. ^'"' Cilicia was thus recovered, and a second victory over 
the Parthians in Syria put the Romans again in possession of all 
their former dominions, except the town of Aradus, which being 
exceedingly strong in its natural situation, was long and obsti- 
nately defended. ^*^ It was in the following year, while Anto- 
nius was still lingering in Greece, that Pacorus, the son of the 
Parthian king, made a second attempt to reconquer Syria, and 
was defeated and slain by Ventidius in a battle which the Ro- 
mans dwelt on with peculiar delight as a retaliation for the de- 
feat and death of Crassus. 

Augustus, probably, was by this time well aware of the little 
Renewal of the war danger hc had to apprehend from the character of 

between Augustus a ^ • ii i tii- 

andsex.pompeius. Autoums ) and he commenced, accordmgly, his 
attacks upon Sex. Pompeius, in order to make himself sole sove- 
reign of the western provinces, in a spirit of undisguised ambition, 
which a more observant and active rival would have repressed 
by a timely resistance. He at this time received into his service 
a man of the name of Menas,*^^' one of the ablest officers of Sex. 
Pompeius, who being an enfranchised slave and a mere soldier 
of fortune, was tempted easily to follow a master so much more 
powerful than his old one. Menas, not content with his own 
desertion, gave up to Augustus the islands of Sardinia and Cor- 
sica, and an army of three legions, which had been intrusted to 
his command ; and when Pompeius remonstrated against this 
breach of the treaty, Augustus answered him by complaints of 
counter-violations of it on his own part ; accusing him of having 
built new ships of war, and of still encouraging secretly the com- 
mission of acts of piracy on trading vessels bound to Italy. It 
appears that some of the men taken on board of some piratical 
ships were put to the torture,^"" and it was thus that the confes- 
sion was extorted from them, that they were acting at the instiga- 
tion of Sex. Pompeius. On the other hand, Pompeius complained 
that the exiles who had returned to Italy had not recovered the 
portion of their property which had been promised them, and 

297 «< Extinctus est virtute et ductu Ven- field, but was made prisoner, his death 

lidii," are tlie words of Paterculus: "P. seems to have taken place in the manner 

Ventidius Parthos, prailio victos, Syria ex- described in the text, and not in battle, 

pulit, Labieno eorum duce occiso," is the '^^ Strabo, XVI. 873, edit. Xyland. 

account of the epitoniizer of Livy. But ^^^ Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 384, et seq. 

as it appears froin the more detailed and Appian, V. 77. 

peemingly probable account of Dion Cas- ^oo i^„j ^ Katcap rna Xpan'/pia auXXajSw^ 

sius, that Labienus was not killed in the i0a(Tavi^cv. Appian, V. 77. 



AUGUSTUS AND SEX. POMPEIUS. 441 

that Acbaia was not ceded to him ; but that Antonius was drain- 
ing it to the utmost of all its wealth, 3" ' that when he gave it up 
it might be a useless acquisition to its new master. When we 
compare the respective grounds of complaint alleged by the two 
parties, and consider, besides, which was most likely to be 
anxious for a new rupture, there can be little doubt but that Au- 
gustus was the aggressor, and that Pompeius was in truth, accord- 
ing to the expression of Tacitus,^"^ deceived to his ruin by a mere 
show of peace. Be this as it may, the war was speedily renew- 
ed, and Augustus requested Antonius to co-operate with him in 
conducting it. Antonius, who was then in Greece, crossed over 
to Brundusium to meet him j^"^ but not finding him there, he re- 
turned again immediately with so little apparent cause for his 
sudden departure, that men accounted for it according to their 
own fancies, and some attributed it to a superstitious alarm oc- 
casioned by a reported prodigy. Perhaps he was glad of any 
excuse for not taking part in the contest, and availed himself of 
some rumours respecting the progress of the Parthians in the 
East, as a reason for returning instantly to his own provinces. 
Augustus, however, resolved to carry on the war alone ; but his 
first attempts to invade Sicily were so foiled by storms and the 
resistance of the enemy, that he recalled his ablest lieutenant, 
M. Agrippa, from Gaul, to assume the direction of his forces, and 
began to make preparations for another attempt on a scale pro- 
portioned to the greatness of his power.^"* 

It seems to have been towards the close of the year 715, 
when Augustus was greatly annoyed by the dis- Treaty of Tarentum 
appointment of his hopes of conquest in Sicily, and and^M^Antomul'"^ 
irritated at receiving no assistance from Antonius, ^- *^- '''^• 
that Antonius crossed over to Italy once more with a fleet, as it 
is said, of three hundred ships of war,^''^ which he seemed as 
much inclined to employ against Augustus as in his behalf. 
His honour and his interest, indeed, alike urged him to defend 
Sex. Pompeius ; but his unsteady resolutions were liable to be 
influenced by any motive that could gain a momentary ascend- 
ency over him ; and on this occasior), his Avife, Octavia, was as 
injurious to her husband's interests, by persuading him to peace 
with her brother, as she was a few years afterwards, when the 
affronts which she received from him became one of the osten- 
sible causes of the last decisive war. Antonius and Augustus 
met at Tarentum ; Antonius contributed a large portion of his fleet 
for the prosecution of the Sicilian war, and received in exchange 
two legions from Augustus to strengthen the army which he in- 
tended soon to lead into Parthia. Then, as the term of their 

301 Dion Cassius, 385. Appian, 77. ^oi pion Cassius, 387. Appian, 96. 

302 Annal. I. 10. 305 piutarch, in Antonio, 35. Dion 
803 Dion Cassius, 385. Appian, 79. Cassius, XL VIII. 390. Appian, V. 93. 



442 



MARRIAGE OF AUGUSTUS WITH LIVIA. 



Triumvirate was just expiring, they renewed it, by their own sole 
authority, for five years more ; and to cement their union more 
strongly, a further interchange of marriages between the differ- 
ent members of their famiHes was agreed on, but was never car- 
ried into effect.^"® When this new arrangement was settled, An- 
tonius left Italy, to return to it no more ; and consigning Octavia, 
as well as his children by his former marriage, to the care of 
Augustus, he immediately hastened into Asia. 

About this same time Augustus married his third wife, 
Maniaee of Augustus Livia,^°^ who was givcu up to him by her husband, 
mwi™"'''''^^"'^ Tiberius Nero, although she was at that very time 
far advanced in her pregnancy. Into this act, indecent and scan- 
dalous even in the estimation of the Romans themselves, Augus- 
tus was hurried, it is said, by his passion for the person of Livia ; 
and this union of mere sensuality with a temper of the utmost 
coldness and heartlessness, is by no means uncommon, and shows 
with what facility vices, apparently the most opposite, can exist 
together in a character totally unprincipled. We have already 
mentioned that the first marriage of Augustus with Clodia, the 
daughter-in-law of Antonius, originated altogether in political 
views, insomuch that he treated her with total neglect even while 
their connexion nominally lasted ; and he divorced her when her 
mother, Ful via, joined with L. Antonius in opposing his dominion 
in Italy. He then married Scriboniaj^^^ the daughter of L. Scri- 
bonius Libo, and whose sister was the wife of Sex. Pompeius ; 
and the second marriage was concluded like the first, from mere 
motives of personal interest, when he dreaded- the union of Anto- 
nius and Sex. Pompeius against him soon after the siege of Peru- 
sia. and was anxious to form some connexion with those whose 

30S Thecharacterofall these transactions supply his total deficiencies as a general, 

between the Triumvirs is well given by and his utter want of generosity and noble 

Tacitus, in the following words : — " Anto- feeling, are- all represented over again most 

nium Tarentino Brundusinoque Fcedere, faithfully in Louis XI. ; while the violent 

et nuptiis Sororis illectum, subdolse affini- and headstrong selfishness of Antonius, 

tatis pcenas morte exsolvisse." Annal. I. the cruelties in which he indulged from 

10. Augustus and Antonius were the passion and resentment, the easiness with 

exact counterparts of Louis XL of France, which he was managed by his adroit an- 

and Charles Duke of Burgundy ; and the tagonist, that incapability of pursuing his 

manner in which Augustus amused his own interest steadily, which rendered his 

rival, till he had cut off all his other op- military prowess so often nugatory, togeth- 

ponents, brings strongly to mind the cau- erwith those gleams of a noble spirit 

tious observance which Louis showed to- which sometimes burst through the darker 

wards Charles, till he had destroyed the parts of his character, are qualities which 

count de St. Pol, and divided and broken the reader of Philip de Comines will re- 

the power of his own nobles, in whom the cognize as distinguishing the unfortunate 

house of Burgundy might have found such Charles of Burgundy, 
useful auxiliaries. The cunning and cal- 307 Velleius Paterculus, IL 79. Tacitus, 

culatin" cruelty of Augustus, his wisdom Annal. L 10 ; V. ]. 
in the choice of his servants, his skill in ^^^ Suetonius, in Augusto, 62. Appian, 

corrupting those of his rivals, the address V. 53. 
with which he made hia political talents 



SEX. POMPEIUS IS CONQUERED. 443 

influence might be supposed to be powerful over Pompeius. But 
Scribonia's conduct, according to his own account, was exceed- 
ingly profligate, ^"^ and he chose to divorce her, it is said, on the 
very day on which she became the mother of his daughter, 
JuUa f^° though, as we are told that he was already enamoured 
of Livia, the guilt of Scribonia may be as doubtful as that of Anne 
Boleyn, whom her husband accused of infidelity when his own 
affections were diverted to a new object. It should be remember- 
ed, that when Augustus formed his new connexion with Livia, 
after having been twice married from political views, and having 
been twice divorced, he was still no more than twenty-five or 
twenty-six years of age. 

The whole of the year 716 was employed by Augustus and 
Agrippa in completing their naval preparations. Beginning of the 
The Italians and the provinces were again op- siduanwar. 
pressed with a fresh load of taxation to furnish the money that 
was required ;3" while the establishments of all senators, mem- 
bers of the equestrian order, and other wealthy individuals, were 
called upon to supply a certain number of slaves to man the fleet 
as rowers. It was on this occasion, also, that M. Agrippa con- 
verted the lakes Lucrinus and Avernus, on the coast of Campania, 
into harbours, in Avhich the ships might be assembled,^ '^ and 
where the seamen might be exercised at the oar in perfect safety, 
alike secured from storms and from the enemy. At length, in the 
spring of 717, Augustus commenced his operations, being sup- 
ported not only by the fleet which he had received from Antonius, 
but by the military and naval force of the province of Africa, 
which the third member of the Triumvirate, M. Lepidus, was to 
bring over to his aid. A force thus overwhelming could gain little 
glory by its victory;"^ but Sex. Pompeius bravely resisted it, and 
in one engagement totally defeated the enemy's fleet, command- 
ed by Augustus in person, and reduced to the utmost distress 
the legions which, under the command of Cornificius, had effected 
a descent on the coast of Sicily. They were, however, relieved 
by M. Agrippa ; and soon after, Sex. Pompeius hav- ^ex. pompeius u 
ing been defeated by Agrippa in a general naval conquered. 
engagement,^'* and being utterly unable to withstand the united 

^ " Cum hac etiam divortium fecit, cript of the famous description of the de- 

pertSESUS, ut scribit, moriim perversitatem cisive defeat of the Athenians in the har- 

ejus." Suetonius, in Augusto, 62. hour of Syracuse, in the seventh book of 

310 Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 377. Thucydides, 70, 71. We care little for the 

311 Dion Cassius, XLVIII. 387. plagiarism ; but it shows the manner in 

312 Dion' Cassias, XLVIII. 387. Vel- which the later Greek historians compiled 
Seius Paterculus, II. 79. their narratives, not giving authentic ac- 

313 Dion Cassius, XLIX. 392, et seq. counts of the battles or sieges which they 
Velleius Paterculus, 79. Livy, Epitome, profess to describe, but borrowing some 
CXXIX. famous passage of description from one of 

314 Tfce -whole account of this battle, their old writers, and applying it, without 
given by Dion Cassius, is almost a trans- scruple, to their own immediate subject. 



444 LEPIDUS IS DESERTED BY HIS ARMY. 

forces of Augustus and Lepidus on shore, abandoned the contest, 
and escaped with his family and most valuable effects to Pelo- 
ponnesus. 

The moment was now favourable to Augustus for ridding him- 
Disputes between Au- sclf of auother rival. Somc disputcs had already 
gustus and Lepidus. ariseu betwceu him and Lepidus, because Lepidus 
naturally objected to that tone of superiority which his associate 
pretended to assume f^^ but the quarrel came to an height when 
the army of Sex. Pompeius at Messina surrendered to Lepidus in 
the absence of Augustus ; and Lepidus saw no reason for yielding 
up to his colleague a force which had voluntarily submitted to 
himself In this state of things, Augustus presented himself, with 
only a small guard attending his person, at the camp of Lepidus ; 
and being allowed to enter without suspicion, he began to tamper 
with the soldiers of his rival, trusting that his superior power and 
ability would prevail on them to desert him. But he was disap- 
pointed in this hope, and the soldiers of Lepidus, irritated by his 
proposals, fell upon him and his escort, and obliged him to save 
his life by a precipitate flight. Wh.en treachery had thus failed, 
he applied himself to open force, and bringing up his whole 
Lepidus is deserted by army, prepared to besiege the camp of Lepidus. 
by^A™ustSs of aiiws Lcpldus, destltutc of all personal influence over his 
u°c!7i8. soldiers, saw them now gradually abandon him, 

and go over to his enemy ; till at length, despairing of his for- 
tune, he laid aside his general's dress, and, in a mean habit, be- 
took himself to the camp of Augustus, and prostrated himself be- 
fore his feet. With that nice discrimination which led him to 
shed no blood, unless it were for his interest, and to show no 
mercy towards those whom he respected and feared, Augustus 
merely deprived Lepidus of his power as Triumvir, and granted 
him the free enjoyment of his life and of his private property, 
while he put to death, with few exceptions, every senator and 
member of the equestrian order whom he found amongst the fol- 
lowers of Pompeius, and either gave up all the slaves amongst 
his prisoners to their former masters for execution, or, if their 
masters could not be found, ordered them himself to be crucified. 

Immediately after these great successes, the army in Sicily,^'^ 
Mutiny of the army couscious of its power, bcgau to mutiuy ; and find- 
suppresse yAugus- .^^^ ^^^^^ their- dcmauds were not listened to, the 

legions petitioned for their discharge, imagining that Augustus 
would be afraid to disband them, and thus leave himself exposed 
to the attacks of Antonius. But the example of his uncle's con- 
duct in similar circumstances was not lost upon him ; he professed 
his readiness to comply with their wishes, and first discharged all 

3>5 Dion Cassius, XLIX. 398, et seq— 3'6 Velleius Paterculus, II. 81. Diou 
Velleius Paterculus, II. 80. Cassius, XMX. 39SJ. 



MUTINY OF THE ARMY SUPPRESSED BY AUGUSTUS. 445 

those who had served under him against M. Antonius at Mutina ; 
he then dismissed every soldier who had been enUsted as long as 
ten years ; but to these last he refused to give the rewards and 
settlements in land which they had expected, and by this punish- 
ment, and by declaring that he would never again employ any 
of the troops whom he should now discharge, he terrified the rest 
of the army, and made them desirous of continuing in his service. 
Having thus restored order, he proceeded to conciliate the late 
mutineers by a display of his liberality. Besides various honorary 
rewards, and a donation in money, he assigned to them those 
settlements in land which they coveted above every thing else ; 
and, to increase the value of the gift, he purchased, we are tgld, a 
large tract of country in Campania, to be divided amongst his 
soldiers,^"' and repaid the former colonists of Gapua by a grant of 



3W Dion Cassius and Paterculus, locis 
citatis. We have copied the statement of 
Dion Cassius, but without being at all con- 
fident of its accuracy. Capua, as we be- 
iieve, became a Roman colony in conse- 
quence of the Julian law, passed by Csesar 
in his first consulship, v. c. 694. But the 
soil of this part of Campania was so much 
coveted, that succeeding demagogues or 
usurpers were not pleased to be deprived 
of a means of bribing or rewarding their 
followers ; and accordingly we find that 
M. Antonius, soon after Caesar's death, 
planted new colonies in Campania, regard- 
less of the rights of those already estab- 
lished there, and encroaching in particular 
on the territory of Capua. Cicero, Phi- 
lippic. II. 39, 40. Appian tells us, that 
Capua was one of the cities which the Tri- 
umvirs gave up to their soldiers when they 
commenced their usurpation. Probably it 
was not a military colony, and its inhabi- 
tants might therefore have been ejected 
without scruple. But a colony of veterans 
seems to have been settled there, when 
Augustus divided so large a portion of all 
Italy amongst his soldiers, after the battle 
of Philippi. This colony, however, was 
capable of receiving a greater number of 
inhabitants ; tiroiKiov h n6\is ttoXXmj' Huto, 
are the words of Dion Cassius. Possibly 
the veterans who had been settled there 
had been tempted to serve again either 
under Augustus or Antonius, and many of 
them may thus have perished, either in the 
East or in the actions with Sex. Pompeius. 
Besides, the decay of these military colo- 
nies was often inconceivably rapid, from 
the habitual extravagance of the soldiers 
and their ignorance of farming ; so that 
they soon parted with their shares, and 



were eager to go to the wars again, to en- 
title themselves to a new division of spoil. 
But it was competent to the government 
to fill up the numbers of colonies thus di- 
minished ; " Cblonosnovos adscribi posse," 
Cicero, Philippic. II. 40, because the state 
never lost its right of re-entering into the 
possession of its demesne lands, if the ten- 
ants to whom they had been granted, or 
their heirs, ceased to occupy them. Ac- 
cording to Dion Cassius, however, we 
must suppose that Augustus gave the rev- 
enues in Crete to the old colonists of Cap- 
ua, as a compensation for the land which 
he reclaimed, for the purpose of the state, 
in Campania, and which may have come 
into their hands as the shareholders drop- 
ped off, in the same way that the national 
lands were so often usurped of old by the 
rich citizens, as the small landholders be- 
came obliged to part with their shares. 
But if we could be sure that Dion Cassius 
had copied Jiis account from Valerius Pa- 
terculus — and certainly the passages 
strongly resemble one another — we should 
think that he had misunderstood the writer 
whom he was following, and that Patercu- 
lus had meant to say, that the revenues in 
Crete were given to the Roman treasury 
as a compensation for the loss of the Cam- 
panian rents, which were at all times so 
valuable a part of the revenue, and which 
were constantly paid by the small farmers 
who cultivated those parts of the national 
lands, which had not yet been divided out 
as colonies. See Cicero, de Lege Agra- 
ria, Orat II. 30,31. 

We should apologize, perhaps, to the 
general reader for this long and unsatis- 
factory note ; but if any person, well con- 
versant with Roman history, should peruae 



446 HONOURS PAID TO AUGUSTUS. 

a larger revenue arising from some lands in Crete. Before he 
returned to Rome, he was desirous of crossing over into Africa, 
to superintend the settlement of that province, which, on the 
deposition of Lepidus, had submitted to his authority without 
resistance ; but he was prevented by a continuance of stormy 
weather f^^ and thus, it is said, Africa and Sardinia were the only 
provinces in the empire which in the course of his life he never 
visited. 

He returned to Italy in time to check a rising insurrection in 
Honours paid to Tuscany ; this is all that Dion Cassius tells us :^^' 

Augustus on his , r .• • ^ • 

return to Italy. uor have wc any means oi estnnatmg the magni- 

tude, of the danger from which his timely victory in Sicily had 
delivered him. But, as it was, he found nothing in Italy but an 
excess of servility. He seemed ah'eady to be regarded as the 
sovereign of the empire ; for he had for some years resided amidst 
the Romans, while Antonius was engaged in distant wars, or had 
been revelling in Greece and in Egypt ; and now Antonius ap- 
peared to be altogether forgotten, while the senate, if we may still 
call it by that name, was lavishing on Augustus those excessive 
and odious distinctions which had before been heaped upon his 
uncle. As if in ridicule of its own flattery, we are told that the 
senate presented to Augustus a list of the difterent honours which 
had been voted to him,^"" that he might either accept the whole, 
or select as many as he thought proper. It is said that he chose 
the following : to enter the city with the ceremony of the smaller 
triumph, or ovation ; that his victory should be commemorated 
every year by some days of solemn' thanksgiving ; and that his 
statue in a triumphal dress should be erected in the forum, on the 
top of a pillar ornamented with the beaks of ships. The dignity 
of Pontifex Maximus, which was held by M. Lepidus, was also 
offered to him ; but as it could only be legally vacated by death, 
he refused to accept it ; he was invested, however, with the more 
valuable character of perpetual tribune f^'- that is, his person was 
declared sacred ; and to offer any violence to him was made as 
great a crime as to injure the person of a tribune. On his first 
arrival at Rome, he addressed the senate and the people succes- 
sively in set speeches, which he afterwards published, and which 
contained a general exposition of his whole political career. He 
then promised his hearers the enjoyment of a state of peace and 
prosperity ; and in some measure to verify his words, he remitted 
all the yet unpaid taxes which he had imposed for the support of 

these pages, the statement of what is to ^'^ Suetonius, in Angusto, 47. 

us n difficulty may, perhaps, direct his at- 3" Dion Cassius, XLIX. 400. 

teniion more successfully to the same sub- ^'^ Appian,V. 130. 

ject ; and thus even a display of our own ^^' Dion Cassius, XLIX. 401. 

ignorance may possibly not be without its 

benefit to our readers. 



HIS PERFIDY TOWARDS THE FREEDMEN. 447 

the war with Sex. Pompeius, and gave a general discharge to all 
those who were indebted to the treasury before the commence- 
ment of the civil war ; but this last piece of liberality excited some 
ridicule, inasmuch as he made a merit of resigning what he had 
little chance of ever recovering. The system of audacious rob- 
bery which the distresses of the times had long fostered in Rome, 
he now took effectual measures for suppressing f^^ and by the 
establishment of a strong night patrole, and the appointment of 
an officer, with those ample powers with which the special com- 
missions even under the old government had always been invest- 
ed, he is said to have delivered the country entirely from this evil 
in the space of a twelvemonth. Another of his His perfidy towards 
measures rivalled in cruelty the sweeping massa- *ad^"'ef!^d"unde°r 
ores of Sylla, and was marked by a perfidy which ^^''- po™p""s. 
was eminently characteristic of Augustus, Great numbers of 
slaves had enlisted some years before in the service of Sex. Pom- 
peius,^23 a,nd when he concluded his treaty with the Triumvirs, 
it was stipulated that all these persons should be allowed their 
liberty, and might return in safety to Italy.^^^ But Augustus sus- 
pecting that they would cherish a fondness for the memory of 
Sex. Pompeius, which would make them disaffected towards him- 
self, is said to have sent sealed orders to all his armies, with 
directions that they were all to be opened on the same day ; and 
on that day all the freedmen, who had gained their liberty from 
the treaty between Pompeius and the Triumvirs, were arrested 
and sent to Rome. Augustus then ordered them all to be given 
back to their former masters, or to their masters' heirs, if they be- 
longed to a Roman, an Italian, or a Sicilian ; and if no one ap- 
peared to claim them, they were sent to the cities in which they 
had lived in their state of slavery, and were there put to death. A 
somewhat similar act of bloody treachery is recorded to have been 
committed by the Spartans upon those of their helots whose spirit 
and enterprise they most dreaded ; but while the Spartans have 
been ever justly condemned for this and other such deeds, the 
memory of Augustus has escaped the detestation which it de- 
serves ; and this perfidy and cruelty has been called, even by a 
modern historian, " a severe but well-concerted reform." ^^^ 

322 Appian, V. 132. and that they were living peaceably, as 

'^•* Appian, V. 131. far as appears, in Italy, at the moment at 

324 Dion Cassius, XL VIII. 378. Appi- which they were treacherously seized. — 

an, V. 72. According to Ferguson, they were slaves 

'■^^ Ferguson, V. 7. In this instance, as who, having deserted during the civil war, 

well as in the account of Sylla's massacre, were " taken into the levies which were 

which we formerly noticed, Ferguson has continually forming by different parties ;" 

completely misrepresented the facts of the and Octavius wished" to purge the army of 

case ; for he entirely omits to mention a dangerous class of men by whom it was 

that the slaves were men who had served overchai-ged and contaminated." If, in- 

under Sex. Pompeius ; that they had re- deed, the freedmen, who had formerly 

ceived their liberty by a solemn treaty; served under Pompeius, had enlisted since 



448 LAST ADVENTURES OF SEX. POMPEIUS. 

Sex. Pompeius did not long survive this treatment of his old 
Last adventures of followers. When he reached the coast of Pelopon- 
sex. Pompeius ncsus, he was joined by several vessels which had 
escaped from Sicily : bat despairing of continuing the war, he 
recommended their captains to provide for their own safety, and 
himself, with a very small force which he still retained, sailed for 
Asia, with the intention of requesting the protection of Antonius. 
He first stopped at the island of Lesbos, at that very city of 
Mitylene,^^^ in which his mother and himself, then a boy, had 
received his father in his flight from the battle of Pharsalia, and 
where the inhabitants still cherished with a fond regard the 
memory of his father's virtues. The kind reception which they 
gave him revived his hopes ; at the same time he received tidings 
of the disastrous expedition of Antonius against the Parthians, 
and of the dissension between Augustus and Lepidus in Sicily. 
He is said accordingly to have played a double part, on the one 
hand endeavouring to win the support of the Parthians, and on 
the other soliciting the friendship of Antonius, when he found 
that he had returned from Parthia in safety. But we are told 
also that C. Furmus,^" who was the lieutenant of Antonius in 
the province of Asia, had shown an unfriendly disposition towards 
Pompeius from the first moment of his arrival at Lesbos ; and 
that M. Titius, whom Antonius had sent from Syria to oppose 
him, on the first tidings of his hostile purposes, had formerly 
received kindnesses from him, which he had repaid by deserting 
his service and going over to Antonius. What provocation then 
these two officers may have given, or how far they may have 
misrepresented to their general the conduct of Pompeius, is ditii- 
cult to say ; but we are told that Pompeius having collected a 
small force, partly from his own partisans, who now again joined 
him after their dispersion, and partly from that distressed portion 
of the population which seems in these times to have abounded 
in every quarter of the empire, and to have been always ready to 
follow any standard in the hope of plunder, began to act in a 
hostile manner in Asia. Some of his principal friends,^^^ and 
among the rest his own father-in-law, L. Libo, are said to have left 
him, from a conviction of the utter hopelessness of his cause, and to 
have made their own terms with the officers of Antonius. Pom- 
peius himself was willing to surrender himself to G. Furnius,^^' 
but this offer was refused ; and he could not bear to put himself in 

their emancipation in the army of Angus- ^"^^ Dion Cassius, XLIX. 402. Appian, 

tus, it only enhances the atrocity of his V. 133. 

conduct towards them ; but it does not ap- ^'" Dion Cassius, XLIX. 402. 

pear that they had done so, but ratlier that ^^^ Appian, V. 139. 

they were living peaceably in Italy on the ''•' Appian, V. 141. 

faith of thai treaty which had stipulated 

for their liberty. 



QUARREL BETWEEN AUGUSTUS AND ANTONIUS. 449 

the power of Titius, whom he considered an ungrateful traitor. 
But being overpowered by the force brought against him, and 
having in vain endeavoured to make his way into the interior of 
Asia Minor, he was finally taken prisoner, and, as might have 
been expected, was put to death by Titius,^^" at Miletus. It is the 
more probable account that this act was committed He u put to death in 
without the knowledge of Antonius; but it was thelieutenaius of In- 
received by Augustus at Rome as a triumph won by u.T^ns. 
his associate,^^^ and he celebrated it by rejoicings, and by pay- 
ing some public compliments to Antonius, while the people at 
large, indignant at the death of the last surviving son of the 
great Pompey, retained a strong detestation of Titius as the author 
of it ; and some time afterwards, when he was exhibiting some 
games in the theatre of Pompey,^^*^ he was driven from the theatre 
by a general burst of public feeling, as if one of the monuments 
of Pompey's munificence ought not to be profaned by the presence 
of the murderer of his son. 

In the interval which followed before the commencement of 
the final contest with Antonius, we read of several wars carried 
on by Augustus and his lieutenants against the rude tribes inhab- 
iting the Alps, and against the Dalmatians ; ^^^ it is mentioned, 
also, that he now led the Roman armies, for the first time, against 
the Pannonians, who lived between Dalmatia and the Danube, 
and whom he attacked without any provocation, for the mere 
object of keeping his soldiers in employment. On his return from 
these wars to Rome, fresh honours were lavished upon him in the 
distinctions conferred upon his wife Livia,^^^ and his sister Octa- 
via, whose persons were declared sacred, like those of the tribunes ; 
and they were allowed the privilege of managing their own affairs 
without a guardian or trustee, whose agency was necessary to 
all women in legal transactions, as no female was supposed to be 
independent, or was capable of acting in her own name. '\ 

The Triumvirs had renewed their power for a period of five 
years, as we have already seen, from the beginning of the year 
716 ; and the succession to the ordinary offices of the common- 
wealth had been settled for eight years, when the Triumvirs con- 
cluded their treaty with Sex. Pompeius in the year First beginnings of the 
714. According to this arrangement, the Triumvi- lustusand Anto"niifs"" 
rate properly expired on the last day of the year 720 ; and Cn. 
Domitius Ahenobarbus and C. Sosius were the persons who had 
been named as consuls for the year 721. Already were the signs 
of an approaching quarrel between Augustus and Antonius be- 
come clearly visible. Antonius could not be insensible to the 

330 Appian, V. 144. Strabo, III. 150, 333 Livy, Epitome, CXXII. Dion Cas- 
edit. Xyland. sius, XLIX. 412, 413. 

331 Dion Cassius, XLIX. 40.3. 33* Dion Cassias, XLIX. 414. 

332 Velleius Paterculus, II. 79. 



450 CONSULSHIP OF SOSIUS AND DOMITIUS. 

great accession of power which his rival had gained by his acqui- 
sition of Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa ; nor was this his only 
ground of complaint ;^^* but he expressed his dissatisfaction that 
Augustus had appropriated to himself the military resources of 
Italy, which were to be divided jointly between them ; and that 
in assigning settlements in lands to the vetei;an soldiers, he had 
confined his grants almost exclusively to those who had served 
particularly under his own standard. Augustus, in reply, taxed 
Antonius with having on his part occupied Armenia, and having 
brought disgrace on the Roman name by the treacherous murder 
of its king ; he said Egypt was, in fact, become his province 
through his connexion with Cleopatra ; and that his soldiers 
could not claim their share of settlements in Italy till they chose 
to divide, with equal fairness, what they had won themselves in 
Media and Parthia. This was a mere insult on the disasters of 
Antonius's late expedition into those countries ; and there was 
hardly more weight in another accusation which Dion Cassius 
ascribes to Augustus, namely, that Antonius had put Sex. Pom- 
peius to death, whereas he himself had purposely allowed him to 
escape from Sicily. But Augustus's main reliance was on the 
feeling of national pride which he hoped, to awaken in the Ro- 
mans, by representing his rival as one who had cast off his duty 
to his country, and was become the mere slave of a foreign queen. 
With this view every tale of the levities in which Antonius in- 
dulged in his hours of festivity with Cleopatra, and of the atten- 
tions and gallantries which he paid to her, was eagerly caught up 
and industriously circulated ; and the public were taught to de- 
plore the degradation of the majesty of the Roman name, because 
Antonius had assumed the character of gymnasiarch, or master 
of the gymnastic exercises at Alexandria ;^^^ because he had 
called Cleopatra his queen and sovereign lady ; and because she 
had some Roman soldiers amongst her guards, and her name was 
inscribed on their shields as their commander and mistress. 

But the two consuls, C. Sosius and Cn. Domitius, were friends 
consuiship'ofc.sosi- of Autouius, and as the Triumvirate was now lesal- 

us and Cn. Domitius. , . i . j i • i . 

u.c. 721. ly at an end, the consular power might seem en- 

titled to resume its ancient ascendency. Accordingly, on the very 
first day of the year,^" C. Sosius delivered a speech full of the 
praises of Antonius, and of invective against Augustus ; and he 
would have immediately proceeded to employ the authority of his 
office in some measure adverse to the interests of the latter, had 
not Nonius Balbus, one of the tribunes, interposed with his nega- 
tive. But this revival of the legal government of the common- 
wealth was, of all things, most unwelcome to Augustus ; he re- 

333 Dion Cassius, I. 419. Plutarch, in 33s Dion Cassius, I. 421. 
Antonio, 55. 337 Dion Cassius, I. 419. 



ANTONIUS RENOUNCES AUGUSTUS. 451 

turned, therefore, speedily to Rome, (for he had absented himself 
purposely from the meeting of the senate on the first of January,) 
assembled the senate, and surrounding his person with a military 
force, and with a multitude of his partisans, armed, it is said, with 
concealed daggers, he took his seat on the curule chair, which he 
was used to occupy, between the chairs of the consuls, and after 
having spoken at some length in defence of himself, he uttered a 
strong invective, in his turn, against Sosius and Antonius. The 
actual presence of his soldiers intimated sufficiently that " the 
master of the legions" was not a person with whom it was safe 
to argue ; no one therefore answered him, and he summoned the 
senate to meet again on a fixed day, when he assured them that 
he would produce written proofs of the un worthiness of Antonius. 
Meanwhile the consuls, followed by a considerable The consuls leave 

, [• . 1 /-A ii -i 1 • ^ 1 -I Kome, and return to 

number oi senators, ielt the capital privately, and Antonius. 
repaired to xlntonius ; while Augustus, to avoid the odium which 
their retirement cast upon him, pretended that he had himself al- 
lowed them freely to withdraw, and that he would not oppose the 
departure of any other friends of Antonius, who might wish in 
like manner to join him. It appears that Antonius had already 
begun to prepare for war ;'^^ and that both Cleopatra and himself 
were about this time in Asia Minor, while their land and sea 
forces were gathering together in the same quarter and in the 
^gean. Here he heard of the proceedings which were going on 
against him at Rome,^^' of the subsequent meeting of the senate 
which took place after the departure of the consuls, and of the 
language which Augustus used both in speaking and writing con- 
cerning him. Upon this he assembled a sort of Antonius renounces 

counter-senate, consisting of the numerous senators Augu°stSlf'aSd''d^ 
who had repaired to him from Rome. After much forces octavia. 
debate, it was resolved that the war should be undertaken ; and 
Antonius sent a formal divorce to Octavia, exactly as Augustus 
had divorced his first wife, Clodia, on the occasion of his quarrel 
with her mother Fulvia and with L. Antonius. But the notorie- 
ty of the connexion of Antonius with Cleopatra, made it appear 
that Octavia was rather sacrificed to his passion for the Egyptian 
queen, than divorced on account of his quarrel with her brother ; 
and this also was used as a topic on which to excite the national 
pride of the Romans, by representing a noble Roman lady as dis- 
honoured and despised by her husband, in order to gratify the 
jealousy of his barbarian paramour. 

This feeling, indeed, was not confined to the Romans of the 
capital ; even the officers of Antonius were disgusted He is deserted by 
at the evident influence which Cleopatra exercised Titius^"*^"^ '^^ 
over him, and against which their wisest counsels were sure to be 

«38 Plutarch, in Antonio, 56. 33» Dion Cassius, I. 420. 



452 THE WILL OF ANTONIUS IS PUBLISHED. 

oifered ineffectually. They might conjecture, too, from the in- 
fatuation of their general, the probable result of the war ; and 
thus L. Plancus,^*" who had formerly made so many professions 
of fidehty to the old constitution, and had afterwards joined the 
Triumvirs, and procured from them the murder of his own brother 
as one of the rewards of his treason, now deserted the cause of 
Antonius. Accompanied by his nephew, M. Titius, the author 
of the death of Sex. Pompeius,^*^ he hastened to Rome to trans- 
fer his services to Augustus. Plancus and Titius had been 
deeply trusted by Antonius, and they now betrayed to his enemy 
They betray the con- evcry sccrct of which they were in possession. 
Au^usuis, who'pub" Amongst the rest they intimated to him the con- 
slnatVanTpe'ifpie.' ^ tcnts of the will of Autouius, which they had 
themselves attested, and informed him in whose care it was 
deposited. Augustus immediately got this document into his 
power,^**^ and with shameless baseness broke open the seals, and 
read the contents of it publicly, first to the senate, and afterwards 
to the assembly of the people. The clause in it which especially 
induced Augustus to commit this act, was one in which Antonius 
desired that his body might, after his death, be carried to Alex- 
andria, and there buried by the side of Cleopatra. This proof of 
his romantic passion for a foreigner, seemed in the eyes of the 
Romans to attest his utter degeneracy, and induced the populace 
at least to credit the inventions of his enemies, who asserted that 
it was his intention, if victorious in the approaching contest, to 
give up Rome to the dominion of Cleopatra, and to transfer the 
seat of empire from the banks of the Tiber to those of the Nile. 
It is clear, from the language of those poets who wrote under the 
patronage of Augustus,^^^ that this was the light in which the 
war was industriously represented ; that every effort was made to 
give it the character of a contest with a foreign enemy, and to 
array on the side of Augustus the national pride and jealousy of 
the people of Rome. Nor were these arts unsuccessful ; insomuch, 

3" Dion Cassius, I. 420. Plutarch, in 3" Velleius Paterculus, II. 83. 
Antonio, 58. 342 Dion Cassius, 420. Plutarch, in 

Antonio, 58. Suetonius, in Augusto, 17. 
343 " Antehac nefas deproniere Cascubum 
Cellis avitis : dum Capitolio 
Regina dementes ruinas, 
Funus et imperio parabat, 
Contaminate cum grege turpium 
Morbo virorum." — Horace, Carm. I ode 37. 
" Hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar, 
Cum Patribus Populoque, Penatibus et Magnis Diis, 

Hinc ope barbarica, variisque Antonius armis, 

— sequiturque, nefas! jEgyptia conjux ! 
»»*♦»* 

Omnigenumque Deiim monstra, et latrator Anubis 
Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam, 
Tela tenent."— Virgil, ^neid, VIII. v. 678. 685. 698. 



WAR DECLARED AGAINST CLEOPATRA. 453 

that the infamy of steahng and divulging the contents of a will 
was forgotten in the indignation felt by the Romans at the prefer- 
ence shown by Antonius to Egypt, rather than to his own country ; 
and it is said that the senate, as soon as they had heard the will 
read, decreed that Antonius should be deprived of the consulship to 
which he was to have succeeded in the following year,^^^ and of 
all his other authority as an officer of the Roman commonwealth. 
His adherents moreover were encouraged to desert him by pro- 
mises of indemnity and honours. 

At the same time war was declared against Cleopatra, and 
Augustus discharged the office of fecialis or herald. Declaration of war 
ingoing through all the usual ceremonies in de- against cieopatra. 
nouncing it. But for a contest of this magnitude, immense re- 
soiu'ces were requisite ; and accordingly Augustus imposed an 
income tax of twenty-five per cent, on all the free citizens who 
possessed any land in Italy,'^^ and a tax upon capital at the rate of 
121. 10s. per cent, on all freedmen who were worth fifty thousand 
denarii, or about 1614/. The inequality of these burdens was 
greatly resented by the freedmen, and numerous disturbances 
were the consequence, insomuch that it was supposed that the 
appearance of Antonius in Italy at that moment would have in- 
sured him a complete victory over his rival. But whether Anto- 
nius was not sufficiently advanced in his preparations to risk such 
an attempt, or whether there was any failure of enterprise on his 
part, it is certain that Augustus was suffered to crush the discon- 
tents of Italy without any interruption. His fleet was assembled 
in the neighbourhood of Brundusium,^^® and threatened the opposite 
coast of Epirus, about the autumn of the year 722 ; and Antonius 
judging it too late in the season to commence any active opera- 
tions, fell back from Corcyra, to which place he had advanced in 
the hope of carrying the war into Italy before his adversary was 
ready to meet him, and passed the winter at Patras, on the north- 
western coast of Peloponnesus. And thus having brought the 
two parties to the eye of the decisive struggle, we shall here pause 
in our narrative ; and referring our readers to the history of 
Egypt^*' for the details of the Actian war, we shall hereafter re- 
sume the story of Augustus at the period when his ambition was 
fully gratified, and he was become the sole sovereign of the Ro- 
man empire. 

344 Dion Cassius, I. 421 . 3« Dion Cassius, 424. 

3« Dion Cassius, L 424. Plutarch, in ^47 Ency. Metrop. 
Antonio, 58. 



CHAPTER XI. 

CAIUS OCTAVIUS C^SAR AUGUSTUS.— A VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF 
ROMK— FROM U.C. 722 TO U.C. 766, A.C. 32 TO A.D. 13. 

If we were to judge of God's moral government exclusively from 
From u. c. 722 to 766. ^hc varlous earthly fortune of good and bad men, 
A. c. 32 to A. D. 13. there are few instances of successful wickedness 
which would more disturb our faith than that of the long and 
peaceful reign of Augustus Caesar. Other usurpers have enjoyed 
till their death their ill-gotten power, but it has been beset by fears 
and anxieties ; and the severity of their government has betrayed 
their consciousness of the real feelings with which they were 
regarded, and has proved that they could truly anticipate the 
sentence which after-ages would pass upon their memory. But 
Augustus reigned amidst the grateful obedience of his people ; 
and the flattery with which his own court resounded, has been 
echoed by successive generations, till he has been habitually 
ranked amongst the best and greatest of sovereigns ; and the 
period of his dominion has been considered synonymous with the 
highest state of civilization and public prosperity. Yet the man 
thus eulogized had shown himself capable of every wickedness, 
so long as his interests required it ; and the merit of his later 
years consists only in that clearness of understanding which 
taught him that power, although most readily gained by crime, 
was most wisely exercised in promoting the happiness of man- 
kind ; and that justice and mercy, when they demanded no per- 
sonal sacrifices, were only a means, as easy as effectual, of pro- 
moting at once his own security and greatness. 

The conquest of Egypt became a most seasonable source of 
Augustus settles the ^'ichcs to Augustus, and he availed himself of it to 
government of Egypt, ^j^g utmost. It is Said that besidcs the immense 
treasures accumulated by Cleopatra,' and the heavy forfeitures 
imposed on all those Egyptians who had served their queen with 
most distinction dining the late war, a tax was imposed on the 
whole people of Egypt to the amout of two-thirds of their property, 
besides a heavy contribution levied on the citizens of Alexandria, 

• Dion Cassius, LI. 455, edit. Leunclavii. 



HONOURS DECREED TO AUGUSTUS BY THE SENATE. 455 

as a ransom for the exemption of their city from plunder. In 
this manner Augustus, we are told, was enabled to pay all the 
arrears due to the army, and to discharge his obligations to those 
creditors who had lent him money for the expenses of the war ; 
while at the same time he carried off a great number of magnifi- 
cent offerings which had ornamented the temples of Egypt, and 
were now to be laid up in those at Rome. It is said, too, that 
after all the spoliations, the wealth and resources of Egypt 
appeared to him so formidable, that he was afraid to intrust that 
province to the charge of any man of rank or influence, lest he 
should raise up a rival to himself. He, therefore, committed the 
government of the country to Cornelius Gallus, a citizen of the 
equestrian order, and a person of very low extraction f he would 
not allow the city of Alexandria to possess any municipal coun- 
cil ; and he declared all Egyptians incapable of being admitted 
into the senate at Rome. At the same time he employed his 
soldiers in clearing out many of the old canals with which the 
country had been formerly intersected,^ and which had been for 
a long period choked up by the mud and sand deposited in the 
successive inundations of the Nile. He then departed from 
Egypt, passed through Syria, and thence continued his progress 
to the province of Asia, wherein he resolved to remain during 
the winter. 

The tidings of his final victory over Antonius and Cleopatra 
arrived at Rome in the month of September,* when, Honours decreed to 
by a curious coincidence, M. Cicero, the son of the u^c'^t^s':' ''"^''■ 
orator, was just entering on his consulship ; for that ofiice, which 
was now a mere empty title, was not held as formerly, for the 
whole year ; but, in order to multiply the patronage of the sove- 
reign, was given successively to several persons, each of whom 
only retained it for two or three months. Although it might have 
been thought that all conceivable modes of flattery to the con- 
queror had been already exhausted, yet the senate, on this occa- 
sion, was once more lavish of its honoiu's to the chief of the vic- 
torious party, and of its marks of disgrace on the memory of the 
vanquished. All monuments in honour of Antonius were ordered 
to be defaced or destroyed ; the day of his birth was to be held 
accursed, and no member of his family was ever to bear the 
praenomen of Marcus. On the other hand, solemn games were 
to be celebrated every five years in honour of Augustus ; his 
birthday, and the anniversary of the day on which the news of 
his victory had reached Rome, were to be kept as days of thanks- 
giving ; he was to be met, on his approach to the capital, by the 

2 Dion Cassius, LI. 455. Suetonius, in * Dion Cassius, LI. 456. Pliny, Hist 
Augusto,66. Natural. XXII. 6. Plutarch, in Cicerone, 

3 Dion Cassius, LI. 456. Suetonius, in 49. 
Augusto, 18. 

30 



456 



AUGUSTUS RETURNS TO ROME. 



Vestal virgins, the senate and people, in procession with their 
Avives and children ; and his power of protection, as tribune,' to 
any one who appealed to him, was to extend to the distance of 
seven stadia and a half without the walls of Rome ; and further, 
he was to have a privilege of pardoning any criminal, by giving 
what was called the vote of Minerva, when the number of the 
voices which condemned, exceeded only by one the number of 
those which acquitted. Finally, on the first of Jan- 
^■^■~'^- uary in the ensuing year, the senators all took an 

oath to observe all his acts ; and the gates of the temple of Janus 
were shut, as if Augustus, by his conquest of Egypt, had deliver- 
ed the commonwealth from every enemy, and had brought it to a 
state of perfect peace. 

Meantime the cities of Asia, wherein Augustus was passing the 
winter, were vying with Rome itself in the flatteries Avhich they 
offered him. They professed to regard it as a great distinction, 
when he allowed temples, dedicated to Rome and to the divine 
Flatteries paid him by JuUus, to bc raiscd at Ephcsus and Nicsea,^ and two 
Asia.^''^"'' '''""' "^ others, consecrated to Rome and to himself, to be 
built at Pergamus and Nicomedia. It is observed, however, that the 
care of the temples dedicated to Julius Csesar, was committed to 
the Roman citizens resident in the cities wherein they were placed : 
while the charge of the temples of Augustus was given to the 
native inhabitants, or, as they were commonly styled, the Greeks. 
The Romans, it is said, would not, at this time, condescend to 
become priests in the temple of a living man,^ although they did 
not object to bestowing divine honours on the same individual 
after death. But the subjects of Rome were less scrupulous, and 
the example of the Greeks of Asia was soon followed, we are told, 
by the inhabitants of the other provinces of the empire. 

In the summer of this year, Augustus crossed over from Asia 
Augustus returns to i"to Grecce, and thence to Italy.^ He lavished the 
^ome. treasures of Egypt so liberally on all classes of peo- 

ple, in donations to his soldiers, in largesses of 100 denarii, or 
about 31. 4.f. Grf. to each individual citizen, and in paying all the 
sums which he had borrowed for the expenses of the war, that 
all his crimes and oppressions were forgotten amid the splendour 
of his munilicence ; nor did he give less general satisfaction by 
refusing the golden crowns which were offered to him, as they 
had been to his uncle, by the cities of Italy, and by remitting all 
arrears of taxes which were still due to the treasury. Such an 
overflow of money was at this time poured into the market at 
Rome, that the price of land rapidly rose,^ and the usual rate of 
interest Avas reduced to only one-third of what it had been before ; 

5 Dion Cassiu8, LI. 458. Tacitus, An- ^ Dion Cassius, LI. 458. 

nal. IV. 37. ^ Dion Cassius, LI. 458. Suetonius, in 

6 Dion Cassius, LI. 458. Augusto, 4L 



CONSPIRACY OF THE YOUNGER LEPIDUS. 457 

the great mass of disposable capital making every one eager to 
become a purchaser of land as the readiest means of investing it 
to advantage, while all who wanted to borrow money were ena- 
bled to procure it on far easier terms than usual. 
Augustus then celebrated his "triple triumph" '= * ree tnump s. 
during three successive days -J on the first of which were com- 
memorated the victories gained either by himself or his lieuten- 
ants, over the Dalmatians, Pannonians, and various other barba- 
rian tribes of Germany and the northern extremity of Gaul -'"on 
the second, his naval victory at Actium : and on the third, his 
conquest of Egypt No mention was made of Antonius ; nor was 
Che late contest represented in any other light than as a struggle 
between the senate and people of ,Bome and the queen of 
Egypt. A figure of Cleopatra lying on a couch, intended to dis- 
play the manner of her death, was carried in the procession ; and 
two of her children by Antoriius. Alexander and Cleopatra, were 
exhibited among the prisoners. One striking change of the forms 
practised under the old constitution was remarked on this occa- 
sion. The consuls, and other magistrates of the commonwealth, 
were accustomed to walk before the chariot of the victorious gen- 
eral ; but now they followed in his train, in company with those 
senators who had served with him in his late campaigns, and 
were now sharing in the honours of his triumph. 

The consecration of a temple, dedicated to Julius Cassar as a 
demigod, soon furnished Augustus with an opportunity of further 
gratifying the people by an exhibition of different kinds of sports 
and combats. It is mentioned, that the hippopotamus and rhi- 
noceros were on this occasion first hunted and killed in a Roman 
amphitheatre ; and that large bodies of the Suevi and the Da- 
cians, the former one of the most powerful of the German tribes, 
and the latter a people who occupied both banks of the Danube, 
in the lower part of the course of that river, were matched against 
each other, and practised each their national mode of fighting 
in real battle, for the entertainment of the spectators. 

It was a little before this time, apparently, that M. Lepidus, the 
son of the late Triumvir, and the nephew of M. conspiracy of 

Brutus, formed a design to destroy Augustus." Lepidus. 

The particulars of this attempt are not recorded : Paterculus 
charges him with intending to assassinate Augustus as soon as 
he should return to Rome ; while the Epitomizer of Livy says, 
that he was meditating an open attack upon his power, possibly 
by endeavouring to draw away some of the legions from his ser- 

9 At Caesar, triplici invectus Romana Triumpho 
MoBoia, &c.— Virgi!, Mneid. VIII. 714. 
18 Dion Cassius, 459 ; and Virgil Mne- " Velleius Paterculus, II. 88. Livy, 
id. VIII. 714. Livy, Epitome, CXXXIII. Epitome, CXXXIII. Seneca, de Clemen- 
Suetonius, in Augusto, 22. tik, 9. Suetonius, in Augusto, 19. 



458 AUGUSTUS REMODELS THE SENATE. 

vice. But whatever his plans were, they were discovered by C. 
Maecenas, to whom Augustus had intrusted the government of 
the capital during his absence, and Lepidus was arrested and 
put to death. His wife, Servilia, is said to have killed herself in 
consequence of his losS; by swallowing fire- 
In the midst of his triumph, and when the sovereignty which 
he had so dearly purchased lay at length securely within his 
grasp, Augustus is said to have meditated an entire resignation 
of his power, and the restoration of the old constitution. This 
report, which is mentioned by Suetonius, became embellished in 
process of time with additional circumstances ; and Dion Cassius. 
in the true style of a Greek rhetorician, represents Augustus as 
consulting his two friends, Agrippa and Maecenas, on this impor- 
tant question ; and ascribes to these two counsellors two speeches 
of immense length, in one of which Agrippa repeats all the old 
common-place arguments in favour of a republic, and urges Au- 
gustus to restore the authority of the senate and people ; while 
in the other, Maecenas, in a strain equally trite, recounts the ad- 
vantages of monarchy, and presses his friend to retain the power 
which fortune had put into his hands. It is most improbable 
that Augustus should ever have entertained a serious thought of 
sacrificing the prize which he had led a life of such surpassing 
wickedness to gain ; although it is perfectly consistent with his 
character that he should have wished to spread such a belief 
among the people, and should appear to be reluctantly induced 
to bear the weight of government, from a compassion for the dis- 
ordered state of the commonwealth. We may more readily be- 
lieve that Maecenas suggested to him many of the measures 
which he now began to carry into execution, for establishing the 
Augu3tus remodels ^^^ ordcr of thiugs.'^ Hc first tm-ned his atten- 
the senate. jjqj-^ jq ||^g scuatc, which he proposed to reduce in 

its numbers, and to remove all those members who seemed unfit 
for their station, from their deficiencies in rank, fortune, or char- 
acter; particularly those individuals who had procured their 
admission after Caesar's death, by purchasing from Antonius a 
pretended grant of that honour by the late dictator, at the time 
when Antonius M'-as availing himself of the possession of Caesar'? 
papers to gratify his own rapacity and ambition. In this review 
of the senate, Augustus chose M. Agrippa as his colleague, and 
after a considerable number of senators had resigned their rank 
of their own accord, to avoid the disgrace of expulsion, each re- 
maining senator was directed to name one other whom he con- 
sidered as most worthy to remain on the rolls. All those whose 
names found no place on this list, and all others whom the cen- 
sors judged it expedient to remove, were then marked down, and 

•' Dion Cassius, LII. 494. Suetonius, in Augusto, 35. 



HIS SALUTARY AND POPULAR MEASURES. 459 

obliged, it is said, to withdraw of themselves, although they 
were not allowed, like those who had resigned before the examina- 
tion, to retain the dress of senators, nor their seats amongst those 
reserved for the senate at the public spectacles. Whilst carrying 
on this scrutiny, Augustus is said to have worn armour under 
his clothes,'^ to have been constantly surrounded by ten of the 
senators, on whose personal strength and attachment he could 
most fully rely, and to have admitted no other senator into his 
presence without causing him to be previously searched, lest he 
should carry about him any concealed weapon. It is added also, 
that he deposed one Q,. Statilius from the office of tribune,^* that 
he raised two senators to the privileges of the consular rank, 
although they had never held that magistracy, and that, follow- 
ing the precedent set by his uncle, he conferred on several noble 
families the dignity of patricians. But his jealousy of the nobility 
was shown by an order which he issued, forbidding any senator 
to leave Italy at any time without his permission, as if fearful of 
their escaping from his superintendence. In this policy also he 
Jrod, as we have seen, in the steps of his uncle, Julius Cassar. 

The ensuing year, ia which Augustus held the office of con- 
sul for the sixth time himself^ and chose M. Agrip- gaiutary and popular 
pa as his colleague, was marked by a variety of ^,f"®^ *^ ■*^"^"'" 
acts, all tending to render the new government u.c. 725. 
generally popular, and thus preparing the way for the scene 
which was soon to follow. In the first place, Augustus affected 
to revive the appearance of the old consulship,'^ by treating his 
colleague entirely as his own equal. He amused the people with 
magnificent games of various kinds ; he formed and opened for 
public use a voluminous library of Greek and Roman literature 
on the Palatine Hill ; he is said to have borrowed money to ena- 
ble him to make a large contribution to the public treasury ; he 
issued four times the amount of the allowance of corn usually 
given to the poorer citizens at the public expense ; he gave sums 
of money to the poorer senators, to enable them to bear the bur- 
den of the aedileship, and other expensive public offices ; he burnt 
the accounts of all debts of long standing which were due to the 
commonwealth; and made over to the possessors the full pro- 
perty of all ground in the capital to which the state maintain- 
ed a doubtful claim.'^ It is mentioned besides, that he not only 
liberally repaired all the temples in Rome which needed it,"" but 
he was careful not to efface the names of the original founders, 
nor to substitute his own as the restorer of their work. He also 

J9 Suetonius, ubi supra. in urbe publiea Juris ambigui poesessoribus 

51 Dion Cassius, ubi supra. adjudieavit." 

15 Dion Cassius, LIII. 496. ^'' Livy, IV. 20. " Augustum Caesarem, 

^ Suetonius, in Augusto, 32. " Loca Templorum omnium conditorem aut resti- 

Jutorem." Dion Cassius. LIII. 497. 



460 AUGUSTUS OFFERS TO RESIGN THE GOVERNMENT. 

stopped the proceedings against all persons who had been long 
exposed to criminal prosecutions, and whose cases had never yet 
been decided ; ordaining, that if the prosecutors were resolved to 
continue their suits, they should themselves be liable, if the ac- 
cused were acquitted, to suffer the same punishment which he 
would have undergone had he been found guilty. Above all, 
this year is mentioned as the period in which most of the disor- 
ders and abuses introduced in the course of the civil wars'^ were 
corrected or removed. Three of the most tlagrant of these are 
particularly noticed.^^ The unsettled state of the times had in- 
troduced the practice of wearing arms for self-defence even in 
the streets and neighbourhood of Rome ; and whole bands of 
ruffians, pretending to be armed only for their own protection, 
carried on their outrages with impunity. These were suppressed 
by a vigorous exertion of military force. By a similar system of 
violence, travellers of all descriptions were continually kidnapped 
on the roads,^'' and carried oif to private workhouses, where they 
were confined as slaves, and treated with the most excessive 
cruelty ; but this evil was remedied by submitting all these work- 
houses to a vigorous search, and delivering all who were unlaw- 
fully detained in them. A third mischief was the formation of a 
vast number of societies or clubs,'^' one of the worst aggravations 
of the miseries of revolutions. These professed to resemble the 
old companies belonging to the several trades in Rome ; but they 
were in reality mere combinations for the purposes of corruption 
or violence ; and it was therefore a general benefit when Augus- 
tus dissolved all associations except those that were ancient and 
agreeable to law. When these salutary measures had won the 
favour of all classes of people, Augustus continued himself and 
Agrippa in the consulship for the following year, and then pro- 
ceeded to execute the trick on which he designed to found the 
permanent establishment of his government. 

It is said by Dion Cassins,^* that several of the senators had 
He offers to resign the becu prepared beforehand for the scene which was 
|?evaited upon to re- to take place, and these would not fail to suggest 
u.clws. to the other members the behaviour which they 

were wished to adopt. Augustus then came to the senate and read 
a speech composed for the occasion, in which he expressed his 
intention of resigning all his power, and restoring the old constitu- 

18 Dion Cassius, LIIT. 4J>7. or criminal causes in thecourtsof law, and 

1* Suetonius, in Augusto, 33. to further their election when canvassing 

20 See the story of Atilius, ante, p. 416. for any public office. See Thucydides, 

21 Similar societies were frequent in VIII. 54. 65, and his character of such so- 
Greece, and are described by Thucydides cieties, III. 82, in fhat admirable passage 
as the ready instruments of violence, and on the seditions of Greece, which is a I'js- 
particularly of a.ssassination in all political son to every age and nation, 
disturbances. Their object was to support 22 LIII. 497. 

their members when engorged in any civU 



SUGGESTION OF THE TITLE "AUGUSTUS." 45 j 

tion of the commonwealth. We may suppose that such a dec- 
laration was heard hy the majority with extreme surprise ; 
many at once perceived its insincerity ; but there were others, we 
are told, who, dreading above all things the restoration of the 
republic,^^ vvere led by their fears to suspect that Augustus was 
in earnest ; and these joined most zealously with the senators 
who were already in the secret, in deprecating a resignation 
which they said would be fatal to the empire. The senators who 
most regretted their ancient independence, joined perhaps the 
more eagerly in the general cry, lest they might betray their real 
feelings ; and thus the proposal of Augustus was received exactly 
as he had hoped ; and in consenting to be the despot of his coun- 
try, he seemed to be only yielding to the national wish, and to 
accept a painful burden, which no other citizen but himself was 
able to bear. Yet that he might not lay aside the mask alto- 
gether, he refused to undertake the administration of all the pro- 
vinces ; and selected only those which were considered as requir- 
ing the most vigilant superintendence, and in which the presence 
of a military force was most necessary.^* The He divider the admi- 
portion of the empire which he thus consented im- vlnces" wit?f thi sen- 
mediately to govern, consisted of the whole of '^'^• 
Spain, with the exception of Bsetica, the limits of which corres- 
pond nearly with those of the modern province of Andalusia, 
the whole of Transalpine Gaul, Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, 
and Egypt. The other provinces were to be governed, as for- 
merly, by proconsuls annually appointed by lot from among the 
senators : and even that part of the empire which was given up 
to Augustus, he declared that he would only retain for ten years, 
within which period he hoped that every necessity for such an 
extraordinary power would be at an end ; and he added, that he 
would gladly restore his provinces earlier to the senate and the 
people, if circumstances should render it practicable. 

The monarchy was thus established, and the senate laboured 
to invent yet additional honours to heap upon their He receives additional 

. T. I 1,1.1 11 I J 1 honours, and the sur- 

new master. It was ordered that laurels should be name of Augustus. 
planted at the gates of his residence on the Palatine Hill, and a 
wreath of oak should be for ever hung up over them ; ^' the first 
denoting that he was ever victorious, and the oaken wreath, or 
civic crown, implying that he was the perpetual saviour of the 
lives of his fellow-citizens. It was debated also, what title of 
distinction should be conferred upon him ; and it was then that 
L. Munatius Plancus suggested the name of Augustus,^^ an 
epithet which was ordinarily applied to places set apart for reli- 

23 Dion Cassius, 502. 25 Dion Cassius, LIII. 507. Valerius 

24 Dion Cassius, 502. Suetonius, in Maximus, 11. 8. 

Augusto, 47. 2s Suetonius, in Augusto, 7. Festus, in 

voce " Augustus." 



462 OF THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF ROME. 

gious purposes, and containing any thing consecrated by augury, 
and which was now offered to the new sovereign, as signifying 
that a more than human sacredness and majesty existed in his 
person. 

In this manner, at the age of six and thirty, did Augustus 
Sketch of the con- rcgularly commcnce his reign OA'er the Roman 

tents of the remain- . xt ^ • i i • t • r ^ 

der of this memoir, empu'c. He Tctamcd his power durmg lorty years, 
a period of general peace and prosperity, during wliich the wounds 
inflicted by the long continuance of the civil wars were gradually 
and effectually healed. To write the annals of such a reign, 
especially with our present scanty materials, would be but a 
meagre and unprofitable labour. We shall rather attempt to give 
a general picture of the whole of it, and without pretending to 
detail the events of every successive year, to present a view of 
the external and internal state of the empire ; of its relations 
with foreign powers ; of the nature of the imperial government ; 
of the condition of Italy and the provinces ; of the physical, 
moral, and intellectual state of the Roman world during this most 
memorable period. Some notice of the family of Augustus, and 
of the person likely to become his successor, may then properly 
precede our account of his death, and serve to connect the present 
portion of our task with the lives hereafter to be given of the 
emperors who followed him. 

The extent of the Roman dominion in the reign of Augustus 
Of the foreign reia- "^^as Still bclow the poiut which it afterward s at- 
tionsof Rome. taiucd uudcr Claudius and Trajan. Britain was as 

yet unsubdued, and a large tract of country between the moun- 
tains of Hcemus and the Danube was not yet tributary to Rome. 
But the empire embraced within its limits the whole of the Medi- 
terranean ; its eastern frontier reached the Euphrates ; the con- 
quest of Egypt extended its southern boundary to the cataracts 
of the Nile ; while in Europe it possessed Spain and Gaul, together 
with all that portion of modern Germany which is situated be- 
tween the Alps and the Danube. It is of little importance, how- 
ever, to ascertain the exact line which separated the Roman 
provinces from the possessions of the independent barbarians. 
Even within the limits of the empire, the more recently conquered 
tribes might create occasional disturbance, and afford some em- 
ployment for the Roman arms. But as far as the knowledge of 
geography then attainable enabled them to cast their eyes around 
the world, the Romans could discover only two nations capable 
of offering an effectual resistance to their power; the Parthians 
in Asia, and the Germans in Europe. 

The Parthians, a rude tribe of mountaineers from the eastern 
I. withParthia. ori- shores of thc Caspian sea, wearing large loose caps 
gin of the Parthians. upott their licads," and armed with short javelins 

2T Herodotus, Polyninia, 66. 64.62. 61. 



THE PARTHIAN CAPITALS. 463 

and bows of cane, marched in company with the neighbouring 
tribes of the Chorasmians and Sogdians, amidst that countless 
multitude of nations whom Xerxes led with him on his memo- 
rable expedition against Greece. Such is the earliest notice of 
the Parthian name which is to be found in history ; the later for- 
tunes of the nation, their subjection to the Greek kings of Syria, 
the foundation of their monarchy by Arsaces, and its subsequent 
progress down to the invasion and defeat of the Roman army 
under Crassus, have been related elsewhere.^* We have also 
mentioned the attack made by the Parthians on Syria and Asia 
Minor, when T. Labienus, a Roman exile, conducted their armies ; 
and have briefly noticed their rapid successes and equally rapid 
reverses ; the victory gained by P. Ventidius over Pacorus, the 
son of their king ; and, lastly, the disastrous attempt of M. An- 
tonius to invade their country, in revenge for the assistance which 
they had rendered to the party of Brutus and Cassius. Their 
empire, which had thus contended against Rome with more than 
equal fortune, now embraced the whole of Asia eastward of the 
Euphrates,^^ to the most remote of those countries which were 
within the knov/ledge of the Romans. They numbered among 
their provinces the once mighty names of Media in Assyria ;^° 
and even Persia itself, the seat of the empire of the great king, 
although it still had princes of its own, was no more than a 
vassal kingdom dependent on the sovereign power of Parthia.^' 
There were two capitals of the monarchy, Ecbatana and Seleu- 
cia.^^ The first, the ancient metropolis of Media, founded by 
Deioces, the earliest of the Median princes, was the summer 
residence of the king of Parthia. His winters were passed in 
the lower and milder country on the banks of the Tigris, where 
stood Seleucia, the former capital of the Macedonian kings of 
Syria. But Seleucia still retained a shadow of independence ; 
its inhabitants, proud of their Greek extraction, language, and 
manners, would have associated ill with the guards and attend- 
ants of a barbarian sovereign ; and in order to save the city from 
the burden of their presence,^^ the court was accustomed to reside 
at the neighbouring village of Ctesiphon, which was situated at 
the distance of about three miles from Seleucia, on the opposite 
bank of the Tigris. In later times, when the citizens of Seleucia 
were become obnoxious to the Parthian government, from having 
betrayed an impatience of its dominion, Ctesiphon was studiously 
favoured as a rival city, which might be made a national capital 
of the empire ;^^ and thus it gradually increased in wealth and 
greatness, while Seleucia as gradually declined and went to ruin. 

28 Ency. Metrop. 32 Strabo, XVL 1,§ IG. 

29 Strabo, XI. 9, § 2, edit. Siebenkees. 33 Strabo, XVI. 1, § 16. Tacitus, An- 

30 Strabo, XVI. 1, § 19, edit. Sieben- nal. VI. 42. 

kees. 34 Pliny, Histor. Natural. VI. 26. 

31 Strabo, XV. 3, § 3. 24. 



464 IJVTERNAL STATE OF PARTHIA. 

Our knowledge of the internal state of Parthia is confined to 
one or two isolated facts. Strabo expressly omits 
all notice of the subject in his geographical work, 
referring his readers to the information concerning it which he 
had given in some of his other writings ;^5 and as these are now 
lost, his reference to them only excites our curiosity in vain. We 
can only discern in Parthia the existence of two orders, of the 
nobihty and priesthood,^® each of which formed a distinct mem- 
ber of the great national council, and from either of them indif- 
ferently the kings might be selected. There was also that striking 
characteristic of the Sclavonic tribes, a powerful nobility, with 
the rest of the population consisting almost entirely of slaves. 
In time of war the nobles attended the king's standard, each 
bringing with him a large body of his dependents. These were 
not freemen, like the feudal vassals of Europe, but slaves ;^'' they 
were, however, all carefully armed and trained as cavalry, for this 
constituted the whole strength of the Parthian armies ; and the 
greatness of the chiefs was measured by the number of slaves 
which they brought into the field. The growth of an inter- 
mediate class of freemen between the nobles and their slaves, 
was checked by the law of the country, which forbade any master 
to give a slave his liberty ; so that the highest and lowest classes 
of society seemed destined to exist alone, and in perpetual contact 
with each other. Probably, indeed, the evils of slavery were 
softened by the interposition of such wide distinctions between 
the slave and the freemen ; as they must, on the other hand, ap- 
pear more intolerable where the line of division is merely arbi- 
trary, and the slave sees around him a number of freemen who 
appear neither in wealth, or birth, or condition, elevated above 
his own level. But when freedom was identified with riches, and 
power, and high nobility, it seemed placed completely out of his 
reach, and the absence of it was so natural as hardly to excite a 
murmur. Those revolts and mutinies, therefore, of which we 
have seen such bloody instances among the slaves in the Roman 
empire, appear to have been unknown in Parthia. None would 
have dared in Greece or Rome to enlist slaves into the army, much 
less to give them the same arms which were intrusted to free 
citizens ; but the Partliian chiefs armed their dependents like 
themselves, and instead of trembling at any symptoms which 
they might display of courage and activity, they trained them 

3> Strabo, XI. 9, §3, edit. Siebenkees. ca^te. Tlie Aclicemenidae in Persia seem 

3S Strabo, XI. 9, § 3. t^Tiv YlapOuuicon av- to have been an instance of a smaller class 

i'ci^ot6ii (ftrjTt Ili(T€t6(ovtns sivai Sittov to jiiv on a more limited scale. 

avyyevTyt/, rii St anp-^n xai /i lyji', t^ coi'dfibntv 37 Jijgiin, XLI. 2. This account of the 

Tofif liaaiXeai KaOiarnatv. We have transla- Parthians seems to be copied from some 

ted o-wyyri/Mi' by the word " nobility," sup- trust-worthy authority, and is consistent 

posing it to signify an extended clan or and sensible. 



PARTHIAN DEALINGS WITH THE ROMANS. 455 

carefully in all martial exercises,^^ and beheld their proj&ciency 
with the same pleasure as that of their own children. 

At the period with which we are now engaged, a prince, 
whom the Greek and Roman writers call Phraates, Transactions between 
was seated on the Parthian throne.^" Having been them and the Romans. 
chosen by his father as his successor, he is said to have secured 
an earlier enjoyment of the crown, by murdering both him and 
thirty of his other sons ; and committing additional cruelties after 
his repulse of the Roman invasion under Antonius, he was driven 
from the throne by the indignation of his subjects, and a succes- 
sor, named Tiridates, was appointed in his room. After some 
time, however, Phraates, by the aid of some of the rude Scythian 
tribes which bordered upon Parthia, recovered his Icingclom, and 
drove his competitor into exile in his turn. Tiridates fled into 
the dominions of Rome, carrying with him the youngest son of 
Phraates, whom he had contrived to get in his power ; and offer- 
ing this young prince as a hostage to Augustus, he requested his 
assistance to restore him to his throne, promising him to extend 
the influence of Rome over Parthia, if he were reinstated by Ro- 
man aid. Phraates, on the other hand, solicited Augustus to 
release his son, and to give up Tiridates as a rebel.^" Augustus, 
more disposed to consolidate than to extend his empire, sent back 
the son of Phraates, and refnsed to assist the attempts of Tiri- 
dates, while at the same time he allowed him to live quietly 
in the Roman dominions. Phraates, thus finding that he had 
nothing to fear from Rome, and still suspecting danger from his 
own subjects, resolved to commit four of his sons to the care of 
Augustus, partly as hostages, and partly, we are told, to prevent 
them from being raised to the throne in his place,"* ^ knowing that 
the Parthians would set up no competitor against him, unless he 
were of the royal stock of the Arsacidee. Augustus received the 
Parthian princes, and treated them with the greatest kindness, bring- 
ing them up in the customs of the Romans, and instructing them 
in the arts and superior knowledge of Europe ; he availed him- 
self also of his friendly connexion with Phraates, to procure from 
him the restoration of all the Roman standards and prisoners 
which had been taken in the expeditions of Crassns and Anto- 
nius.^ ^ This supposed reparation of the greatest disasters sus- 
tained for many years by the Roman arms, was especially grate- 
ful to Augustus ; and there is no foreign transaction of his reign 
on which the panegyrists of those times have dwelt with greater 

complacency. 

• 

33 Justin, XLI. 2. He says that the « Justin, XLTI. 5. 

army which repulsed Antonius consisted ^^ Tacitus, Annal. II. 1, 2. Strabo, 

of 50,000 cavalry, in which number there XVI. 1, § 28. 

were only 400 freemen ; the rest was made ^2 Strabo and Justin, locis citatis. Livy, 

up entirely of slaves. Epitome, CXXXIX. 

39 Justin. XLII. 5. 



466 RELATIONS OF ROME WITH GERMANY. 

Nearly a century had now elapsed since the invasion of Italy 
II. Relation of Rome by the Clmbri and Teutoncs ) and notwithstanding 
Progress %f th^lRo; tlic final destmclion of the invaders, the Romans 
ric^T''"^"^ '"'"*' could not forget that several consular armies had 
been overthrown before Marius had been able to stem the torrent. 
When Caesar first took possession of his government in Gaul, he 
found that the Gauls regarded the Germans with the greatest ter- 
ror, as a people far more warlike than themselves ; and although 
he destroyed the army of Ariovistus, and made a short expedition 
beyond the Rhine, yet the conquest of Gaul afibrded him sufficient 
employment, and the Roman arms had as yet made no serious 
impression upon Germany. During the thirteen years which 
elapsed between the death of Caesar and the battle of Actium, we 
read of a second expedition made b^' the Romans beyond the 
Rhine in the year 716, under the command of M. Agrippa ;^- but 
this had probably no other object than to chastise some of the 
German tribes, who had assisted the Gauls in a fruitless attempt 
to recover their independence. A more regular hostility seems to 
have been carried on against those numerous tribes who were in- 
cluded under the general name of lUyrians,^^ and who occupied 
the whole country between the Alps and the Danube, together 
with the whole of the eastern side of the Adriatic, extending 
southwards to the very confines of Greece. Some parts of this 
extensive tract had indeed been conquered by the Romans at a 
much earlier period : a king of the most southern extremity of it 
had taken part with Perseus in the last struggle made by the Mace- 
donian monarchy, and had paid for his oftence by the forfeiture of 
his dominions ; whilst the Dalmatians, who were thus brought 
into contact with the Roman frontier, were attacked twelve years 
afterwards, merely in order to find some employment for the Ro- 
man arms.^^ Accordingly, several victories were gained over 
them, which were the occasion of a triumph to several Roman 
generals ; and the bounds of the Roman provinces of Illyricuni 
were gradually extended. Yet the Dalmatians were persevering 
enemies ; even in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, they 
inflicted a signal defeat on Caesar's officer, the notorious A. Gabi- 
nius ; and after the establishment of Caesar's power, we find P. 
Vatinius, the successor of Gabinius, complaining, in a letter to 
Cicero,^« of the tedious nature of the contest against them, and of 
the injustice of Caesar, who seemed to expect that he should go 
through the endless labour of conquering the whole people, before 
lie would reward him with the honour of a triumph. The Tri- 
umvirs, however, were more indulgent than Caesar, for Vatinius 

« Dion Cas3iu3,XLVIII. 387. edit. Le- tiqua. To tiie authorities there quoted 

unclavii. may he added Appian, Illyrica, 6. 

« Cluverius, Vlndelicia et Noricum, 1, *^ Polybius, XXXII. 19. 

forming an appendix to his Germania An- *^ Epist. ad Familiares, V. epist. X. 



EXPEDITION OF DRUSUS AND TIB. NERO. 



467 



obtained his triumph, through their favour, in the year after the 
proscription,^^ although the Dalmatians were still unconquered ; 
and only three years afterwards, C. Asinius Pollio obtained an- 
other triumph over the same people,^^ and Horace could speak of 
the " eternal renown " which " the laurel of his Dalmatian tri- 
umph had won for him." Again the contest was renewed by 
Augustus himself, who only four years after the victories of 
Pollio, engaged personally in the Illyrian war, and is said to 
have been wounded in an attack upon one of the fortresses of 
Dalmatia.^8 Under his command Pannonia was invaded and 
conquered; and as the Roman arms continued to advance to- 
wards the Danube, the countries bordering on the Adriatic appear 
to have been at last more eifectually subdued ; and victories be- 
came less frequent in Dalmatia and Liburnia, when they began 
to be won on the frontiers of Vindelicia and Noricum. After Au- 
gustus was established in the full possession of the empire, his 
sons-in-law, Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus, carried the Ro- 
man conquests into Rheetia f° and whatever occasional disturb- 
ances might still arise within that limit, the Danube became now 
regarded as the frontier of the empire, at least during the whole 
of its course through Germany. 

While the Romans were thus extending their conquests from 
the Alps to the Danube, they attempted to pene- ExperiiUon of Dmsus 

,1 i • i >^i ' 1 J. r /-i and Tib. Nero beyond 

trate in another quarter mto the very heart oi Ger- the Rhine. 
many, and to advance their frontier from the Rhine to the Elbe. 
Claudius Drusus was first employed in this service, and after- 
wards his elder brother, Tiberius Nero. In the course of these 
wars more than fifty Roman fortresses were built on the banks of 
the Rhine,^^ many of which were the first germ of towns still ex- 
isting ; and amongst these are to be numbered Mentz, Bingen, 
Coblentz, Andernach, and Bonn. A fleet also co-operated with 
the army, sailing round from the ports of Gaul to the mouth of 
the Elbe ; and the country was so far overrun, that Drusus had 
established military posts along the course of that river, as well 
as of the Weser. Had these successes been unchecked, the Ro- 
mans would have permanently occupied the greatest part of Ger- 
many ; the Latin language and the manners of Italy might have 
prevailed as entirely over the language and manners of the Ger- 
mans as they did over those of the Gauls and Spaniards ; whilst 
the Teutonic tribes, pressed by the Romans on the Elbe, and by 
the Sclavonic nations on the Oder and the Vistula, would have 

4T Fasti Consulares et Triumphi, a Si- ^9 Dion Cassius, XLIX. 412. Florus. 

gonio editi. IV. 12. Suetonius, in Augusto, 20 

^ Fasti Consulares et Triumphi, and ^o Livy, Epitome, CXXXVI. Florus, 

Horace, Carm. II. IV. 12. Suetonius, in Tiberio, 9. 
Cui laurus aetemos honores ^i Fiorus, IV. 12. 

Dalmatico peperit triumpho 



465 CIUINTILIUS VARUS COMMANDS THE ROMAN ARMY. 

been either gradually overpowered and lost, or at any rate would 
never have been able to spread that regenerating influence over 
the best portion of Europe, to which the excellence of our modern 
institutions may in great measure be referred. If this be so, the 
victory of Arminius deserves to be reckoned among those signal 
deliverances which have affected for centuries the happiness of 
mankind ; and we may regard the destruction of Quintilius 
Varus, and his three legions, on the banks of the Lippe, as 
second only in the benefits derived from it to the victory of 
Charles Martel at Tours, over the invading host of the Moham- 
medans. 

It was in the year 744 that M. Claudius Drusus died in Ger- 
many j^'^ and his brother, Tiberius Nero, was appointed to suc- 
ceed him in his command. Tiberius is said to have conducted 
the war with extraordinary success ; to have overrun again the 
whole country between the Rhine and the Elbe, and to have re- 
duced it almost to the condition of a Roman province. But when 
he returned to Rome to enjoy a triumph, and to receive the con- 
sulship, the effects of his victories began to wear away, and the 
Germans soon renewed the contest. Ten years afterwards, when 
Tiberius had been adopted by Augustus as his son,^^ he repaired 
for the second time to Germany, and employed two summers in 
retracing the ground of his former conquests, and in again terri- 
fying rather than subduing the Germans into submission. On 
this occasion, too, the Roman fleet co-operated with the army, and 
again sailed round to the mouth of the Elbe, and advanced some 
way up the river.^* A succession of such campaigns must have 
produced a permanent effect ; and the Germans would have been 
conquered as completely as the Gauls ; for the Gauls had main- 
tained an eight years' struggle against Csesar, and none of their 
efforts had been so formidable as the last, when Yercingetorix had 
roused all the force of his country to contend with the Romans at 
Alesia. But as Tiberius was on the point of commencing hia 
third campaign, a general revolt of all the Pannonian and Dal- 
matian tribes interrupted his career, and gave at this most criti- 
cal moment a breathing time to Germany .^^ The main force of 
the empire was engaged between the Danube and p Quimiiius vams 
the Alps; and the recent conquests of Tiberius be- mTiTmy in'^cema- 
tween the Rhine and the Elbe, were committed to "^■• 
the charge of P. duintilius Varus, with an army of three legions. 
Varus had already been intrusted with the government of Syria,*® 
and in that station had made himself known by his exactions, 
and was said to have transferred to himself the riches of the 
province. In his command in Germany he seemed to consider 

52 Velleius Paterculus, II. 97. ss Velleius Paterculus, II. 110. 

«3 Velleius Paterculus, II. 104. 56 Tacitus, Histor. V. 9. Velleius Pa- 

5< Velleius Paterculus, II. 106. terculus, 117, Dion Cassias, LVI. 582. 



CONSPIRACY OF ARMINIUS. 469 

himself again in Syria ; he introduced the Roman jurisdiction 
into the conquered territories, and irritated the rude minds of the 
barbarians, by subjecting them to a disciphne the most alien from 
their habits and character. But it is said, that in order to lull 
him into a false security, the German chiefs pretended to receive 
with gratitude the institutions which he was introducing among 
them. They concerted quarrels amongst themselves, and soli- 
cited the arbitration of Varus to decide them, professing to ad- 
mire the superior knowledge of the Romans, which taught them 
to settle their differences by the rules of equity instead of by the 
sword. Varus by constitution and habit possessed little of the 
activity of a soldier : the imaginary dignity of his situation, as 
the lawgiver and instructor of Germany, flattered at once his 
vanity and his indolence ; and the licentious and rapacious pas- 
sions which the Roman magistrates were so often accustomed to 
indulge in the provinces, began now also to look for gratifica- 
tion. Those profligacies which Varus might have committed in 
safety amidst the general relaxation of morals in Syria, were con- 
sidered as the most intolerable outrages by the severe chastity of 
the Germans, who looked upon adultery with abhorrence, and 
regarded their wives as the chosen partners of all the dangers and 
labours of their lives. It is likely that the Romans, believing 
themselves securely established in the dominion of the country, 
began to offer without restraint those insults to the wives and 
daughters of their subjects for which the armies of southern cli- 
mates have ever been infamous ; and which in ancient days, from 
the low standard of morals every where existing, were committed 
with peculiar indifference. 

In this state of things the plan of surprising and cutting oft' 
the whole Roman army is said to have been first conspiracy of Armi- 
conceived by a young German chief, whose name "'"s, or Herman. 
the Roman writers have corrupted into Arminius,butto whom we 
may more properly give his true appellation of Herman. He had 
served in the late campaigns amongst the auxiliaries of Rome ]^'' 
and had been admitted not only to the privileges of Roman citi- 
zenship, but also to the rank of the equestrian order. He now 
concerted his measures with his countrymen with the utmost se- 
crecy ; while at the same time he did every thing in his power to 
increase the confidence of Varus, and to lead him into the snare 
which he was preparing. The Roman general had been persuad- 
ed to weaken his forces by sending detachments into various 
parts of the country, at the request of the German chiefs them- 
selves, in order, as they said, to maintain tranquillity, and to se- 
cure the safe arrival of his convoys of provisions j^^ and on a 
stated day the insurrection broke out at a point most remote from 

57 Velleius Paterculus, 118. ss DionCassius, LVI. 583. 



470 FATAL MARCH OF VARUS. 

his head-quarters ; and he received intelligence that the people of 
the country had risen and massacred the troops which they had 
asked him to send among them. Upon this he instantly put his 
army in motion to chastise the insurgents, while Herman and the 
other chiefs of the conspiracy still professed the most entire attach- 
ment to Rome, and promised to join him with their own forces at 
a certain point on his line of march, that they might assist him in 
putting down the rebellion. Varus, we are told, had been previ- 
ously warned of the treachery of Herman by another German 
chief, whom the Romans called Segestes." Herman had mar- 
ried the daughter of this chief against his wishes, and this private 
injury, added to his own attachment to the Romans, made Seges- 
tes disposed to save them from the destruction with which they 
were threatened. When he found that all his warnings had been 
slighted, he addressed Yarns immediately before he commenced 
his march, and while Herman and the other conspirators were yet 
in the Roman camp, and implored him that he would at once ar- 
rest Herman himself, and all the other German chiefs who were 
present, as the only means of defeating their treachery. But Va- 
rus was obstinate in his incredulity ; and Herman and his asso- 
ciates were allowed to depart and put themselves at the head of 
their forces. 

The Roman army was impeded by an immense train of wag- 
varu9 sets out with ous ladcu With their baggage, and by a crowd of 
hi^army from his ^^^^^^ ^^-^^ chlldreu belougiug to thc soldiers, who 

were permitted to follow the march, as the general would not 
allow himself to apprehend any danger. The way ran through 
an extensive forest, called by the Romans the Forest of Teuto- 
burg,®" which spread over a considerable tract of country between 
the Lippe and the Ems. In the intervals, between the woods, 
the ground was broken and boggy, and the Romans had to un- 
dergo the labour of forming for themselves a practicable road, by 
clearing away the trees, and constructing a sort of causeway 
through the worst parts of the morasses. When they were al- 
He is surprised on his ready Wearied by their exertions, and perfectly un- 
march by the Ger- p^.gp^j.g^j f^^. j^j^y attack, the troops of Herman and 

his associates, who were to join them at this place, suddenly ap- 
peared ; and rushing out from the woods on every side, assailed 
them with a heavy discharge of their missile weapons. The Ro- 
mans, encumbered by their heavy baggage, and by the nature of 
the ground, were unable to form in any regular order to repel the 
enemy ; they thus sustained a heavy loss without being able to 
retaliate ; and having made little or no progress in their march, 
they encamped for the night on one of the most open and level 

59 Tacitus, Annal. I. 55. Velleius Pa- s" Dion Cassius, LVI. 583, et seq. 
terculus, 118. 



THE ARMY IS DESTROYED-VARUS KILLS HIMSELF. 47 ^ 

Spots that they could find amidst the forest. Here they destroyed 
or abandoned a great part of their heavy baggage, and the next 
morning again renewed their march. But they still had to con- 
tend with the same natural difficulties of woods and bogs ; and 
while their own numbers were decreasing every hour, the confi- 
dence of success was swelling the force of the Germans ; and 
many, who had at first dreaded to take any part in the conspira- 
cy, came now to share in the anticipated spoils of the Roman 
army. It is said too, that the weather was exceedingly tempestu- 
ous, and that violent squalls of wind and rain impeded the move- 
ments of the Romans, and so drenched their clothing and their 
wooden shields, that they could not stir themselves or wield their 
arms. The result was the total destruction of the Roman army. 
Varus himself and his principal officers, most of them having been 
already wounded, fell upon their own swords, that they might not 
be taken alive by the enemy 5^^ and the wreck of his army, hav- 
ing attempted in vain to secure themselves at the His army is destroyed, 
approach of night by forming a camp, and to shel- and he i^iiis himself. 
ter themselves behind the ditch and. rampart, were persuaded by 
one of their surviving commanders to lay down their arms, and 
to try the mercy of the conqueror. But there is little humanity 
to be expected from barbarians when they feel that the moment 
is arrived for taking vengeance for a long series of insults and in- 
juries. The military tribunes and principal centurions among 
the prisoners were slaughtered by the Germans as victims to their 
gods, before some altars raised in the adjoining woods ; the com- 
mon soldiers were hanged upon the trees, or stifled in the mo- 
rasses ; and the heads of many of those who had perished were 
fastened to the trunks of the trees as a trophy of the victory. 
Above all, it is said, the Germans felt a peculiar delight in tortur- 
ing those of their prisoners who had practised as lawyers in the 
-courts established by Varus ;^^ they put out their eyes, or cut off 
their hands ; and one man, we are told, cut out the tongue of his 
victim, and then sewed up his mouth, exclaiming, " Now, viper, 
cease thy hissing !" In the defeat of the army, the standards of 
the legions and two of the eagles were also taken, and these tro- 
phies were exhibited by Herman to his soldiers, and treated with 
every mark of contempt and mockery. The third eagle was 
saved by the standard-bearer, who pulled it off from its staff, and 
kept it concealed under his girdle ; he then hid himself in a bog 
till the enemy had left the spot, and effected his escape in safety to 
the Rhine. In the mean time other detachments of The Romans are 
the Roman army were attacked in different quar- mMy"°"'°^^"' 
*ters ; and although some succeeded in cutting their way through 
the assailants and escaping into Gaul, yet the triumph of the Ger- 

«i Tacitus, Annal. I. 61. 62 Floras, IV. 12. 

31 



472 EXPEDITION OF TIBERIUS INTO GERMANY. 

mans was every where complete ;" the Romans fled beyond the 
Rhine, and all the conquests which they had made between the 
river and the Elbe were totally and irrecoverably lost." 

The accounts of the consternation produced at Rome by the 
Consternation felt at defeat of Varus dcscrlbc it as so excessive, that unless 
Rome. tjjey came from the Romans themselves, we should 

regard them as the mere exaggerations of national pride in the 
conquerors, exalting the eflects of their own success. We are told 
that Augustus posted guards in different parts of Rome;®^ that he 
continued all the governors of the provinces in their several com- 
mands, as if the crisis required only oflicers of tried ability and 
experience ; and that he followed a precedent which had been set 
during the invasion of Italy by the Cimbri, and repeated in the 
war with the Italian allies, of vowing solemn games to Jupiter, 
" if he would be pleased to bring the commonwealth into a better 
condition." Augustus himself is said to have felt the calamity so 
deeply, that for some months he let his beard and hair grow, and 
would strike his head from time to time against the doors of his 
apartments, exclaiming aloud, " Q,uintilius Varus ! give me back 
my legions." Had the Germans, indeed, united their efforts with 
those of the Pannonians and Dalmatians, and formed any con- 
nected plan for the invasion of the Roman frontiers, the danger 
of an invasion of Italy might not have been imaginary. But the 
Expedition of Tiberius I'svolt of Pannouia had been already quelled,«« and 
Nero into Germany. Tlbcrius Ncro was at Iclsurc to uiarcli with his 
veteran legions towards Germany, and to maintain the usual poli- 
cy of Rome, by acting at once on the offensive, and carrying the 
war into the enemy's country. The Germans were unable to 
meet him in the field, and his caution secured him against every 
attempt at surprise; he accordingly overran and laid waste a dis- 
trict of considerable extent beyond the Rhine, and led back his 
army into winter quarters on the banks of that river," pretending 
to have retrieved the honour of the Roman arms, and to have re- 
stored them to their accustomed superiority. But the frontier had 
receded to the Rhine, and Tiberius could not again advance it. 
Four years afterwards he succeeded to the sovereignity of the 
empire, on the death of Augustus ; and his jealous temper made 
him by no means inclined to see any of his officers obtain the 
glory of effectually conquering Germany. The Rhine thus be- 
came the permanent limit of the Roman dominions ; and that 
great river formed so natural a boundary line, that all attempts to 
penetrate beyond it were renounced as inexpedient ; so that the 
Germans remaining unconquered, had leisure to grow in power^ 

«3 Velleius Paterculus, 120. 65 Suetonius, in Augusto, 23. 

** Hac clade factum, ut Imperium quod 66 Velleius Paterculus, 114. 

in litore oceani non steterat, in ripa Rheni «T Velleiua Paterculus, II. 120. 
fluminis staret. Florus, IV. 12. 



DESPOTIC TENDENCY OF THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION. 473 

and numbers, till they crossed the Rhine in their turn as con- 
querors. 

We have said that Britain was not subdued by the Romans 
till a period later than the reign of Augustus. But 
although it was not yet become a province, yet the 
petty chiefs of the island were glad to propitiate the favour of 
Augustus,®^ by sending offerings to be presented to the temple of 
Jupiter in the capitol, and by paying a small tax or duty on all 
the articles which they imported from Gaul, or exported thither 
in return. However, as these duties were probably only levied 
in the ports of Gaul, the payment of them did not necessarily 
imply a state of dependence, inasmuch as it was only a volunta- 
ry compliance with the terms on which the Roman government 
chose to allow them to trade with its subjects. But the eagerness 
of the Britons for the toys and trinkets which they procured from 
the Roman empire, made them purchase them without complain- 
ing of the duty ; and Augustus found it cheaper and easier to 
levy this tax upon their fondness for finery, than to incur the ex- 
pense of maintaining an army in the island in order to reduce 
them to the condition of tributaries. 

Having thus dwelt somewhat longer than we are accustomed 
to do on the foreign relations of the empire, we shall now return 
within the frontiers, and proceed to describe the nature of the im- 
perial government, and the general condition of the people under 
its dominion. 

Whoever has traced the character of the Roman constitution 
through the successive periods of the common- o^^p^ti, tendency 
wealth, must have observed in it a number of thl'^Xman'^'c^om^ 
points which are entirely congenial to despotism, monweaith. 
In fact, the powers of the magistrates were to a high degree 
tyrannical ; and were only counteracted by the mutual check 
which they severally found in the equally tyrannical powers of 
the rest. For instance, the authority of the consul seems in it- 
self to have been absolute, although its exercise was restrained, 
within the walls of Rome, by the protecting power of the tribunes 
and by the right of appeal to the people ; abroad, by the particu- 
lar provisions of the Porcian law. Till that law was enacted, 
the consul, when without the city commanding the armies of the 
commonwealth, was altogether the master of the life of every 
citizen. Nor was this confined to points of military discipline ; 
for we read that Q,. Fabius Maximus threatened with death a 
citizen who had been just elected to the consulship for the ensuing 
year, because he had maintained the validity of his own election, 
which Fabius wished to overthrow,^^ and to recall the centuries 

68 Strabo, IV. 5, § 3, edit. Siebenkees. Lictores ad eum accedere Consul jussit ; 
*9 Livy, XXIV. 9. Quum T. Otacilius et, quia in urbem non inierat, admonuit, 
ferociter vociferaretur atque obstreperet, cum securibus sibi fasces prseferri. 



474 ELEMENTS OF DESPOTISM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 

to give their votes over again. The censors might degrade any- 
individual from his rank in the commonwealth at their sole dis- 
cretion : the tribunes, or even any single number of their college, 
might stop the proceedings of every department of the govern- 
ment, and seem to have possessed an arbitrary power of commit- 
ting any one to prison who opposed their measures. If from the 
ordinary magistrates of the commonwealth we turn to the senate 
itself, we shall see that body, although properly only a single 
member of the legislature, assuming to itself the right of dis- 
pensing with the laws, or of annulling them altogether, and 
claiming and exercising an unlimited despotism, whenever it 
thought proper to declare the country in danger, and to give the 
consuls charge to provide for its safety. Above all, the Romans 
were familiarized to arbitrary power in the authority possessed 
by the members of the various special commissions which were 
from time to time appointed. The commission of ten senators, 
who Ave re usually empowered to settle the state of a newly-con- 
quered country at the close of a war, was accustomed, indeed, 
to act only in the provinces j but the commissioners for planting 
colonies, for superintending the distribution of national lands un- 
der an agrarian law, for providing for the supply of the Roman 
markets, or for instituting an inquiry into any alleged misdemean- 
ours and malversations, exercised their power towards citizens^ 
and seem to have enjoyed an ample discretion which might be 
moderated only by the fear of future impeachment at the expira- 
tion of their office. In later times the practice of appointing ex- 
traordinary officers had become almost equivalent to the forma- 
tion of a temporary monarchy. Twice had Pompey been in- 
vested with sovereign power over a large portion of the empire ; 
first, when he was intrusted with the supreme direction of the 
war with the pirates, and again when he was sent to finish the 
long-contested struggle with Mithridates. On a third occasion, 
when he was named comptroller of the markets, allowed to ap- 
point his lieutenants to act under hiiu in the difierent provinces, 
and intrusted with the discretionary employment of a large sum 
of the public money, his power seemed far to exceed the level of 
a citizen of a free commonwealth. When, therefore, that atrocious 
Commission of Three for regulating and settling the aflairs of the 
republic was instituted in the persons of Augustus, Antonius, and 
Lepidus, it was a measure not altogether unprecedented, and 
certainly analogous to the less absolute but yet very extensive 
powers which had Ixien often given to special commissioners 
under circumstances of less general disorder. And the imperial 
power of Augustus was only an enlarged special commission of 
the same nature. It was limited in its duration, as it was to ex- 
pire at the end of ten years ; it was conferred by the senate on 
the most distinguished citizen in the commonwealth, for the 



AN EMPEROR NOT A KING. 475 

avowed purpose of remedying the evils which had grown up du- 
ring a period of unparalled confusion. That it was in the high- 
est degree arbitrary, was conformable to the general spirit of sim- 
ilar commissions which had been conferred by the senate and 
people in former times ; and in this manner the government was 
made gradually to slide into a monarchy, merely by a dexterous 
application and enlargement of precedents, which had occurred 
repeatedly through the successive periods of the duration of the 
commonwealth. 

The people have in every age tolerated a despotic power which 
has professed to derive itself from their appointment, and to be 
exercised in their names and for their benefit. Such was the 
power of the Roman emperors ; which, therefore, differed most 
widely in its avowed principle from the monarchies of Asia, and 
from those also which have been established on its ruins among 
the nations of modern Europe. It is true that in the eastern prov- 
inces of the empire, the people, unacquainted with the forms of the 
Roman government, and regarding only the absolute authority 
with which the emperors were invested, early began to bestow 
on them the title of kings, and to look upon them in the same light 
as they had been accustomed to view the successors of Alexander. 
But in Italy, the name of king, or sovereign lord, would have 
seemed a degradation which the Roman people could not endure ; 
and the gross flattery which was offered to the Cassars, was by 
no means characteristic of the new state of the commonwealth, 
but arose out of those strongly marked distinctions by which the 
aristocracy were separated from the bulk of the people. It is 
plain from many passages in Cicero's letters, that the ordinary 
language of citizens of humble, or merely of inferior rank, when 
addressing the nobility, was in a tone of deference approaching 
almost to servility. Nay, even men of rank themselves, when 
writing to those who were still above them in power and dignity, 
used a style of compliment which strikes our ears as offensive ; 
so that it was no sudden influx of servility, but the mere opera- 
tion of the ordinary feelings of the people, which produced that 
style of flattery so observable in the writers of the Augustan age, 
as well as in the decrees of the senate and the speeches of its 
members. In process of time, as the imperial power became more 
firmly established, and as the families of the old aristocracy 
gradually dropped off, this servile language came to be addressed 
more exclusively to the emperors ^ and as the government con- 
tinued to be wielded by a single hand, the people felt more and 
more that strong distinction between themselves and their ruler, 
which marks the relation of sovereign and subject, as opposed 
to that of citizens and their chief magistrate. Hence, in later 
times, the Roman government became a monarchy in the orien- 
tal and modern sense of the term, and its laws and titles were 



476 AUGUSTUS AT ONCE PROCONSUL, IMPERATOR, 

transferred with perfect fitness to the kingdoms of Italy, France, 
and Germany. 

Augustus possessed a power entirely despotic, by the mere 
Extent of the imperial uuiou of the Ordinary magistracies of the common- 
power, wealth in his person, with some few especial en- 
largements of their privileges and authority. He was invested 
with proconsular power in all the provinces in Italy, and even 
within the walls of Rome ; and his authority in the provinces 
was to be paramount to that of the ordinary governors. In the 
same manner, Pompey the Great had received proconsular power 
in all the provinces of the empire within fifty miles of the sea, 
when he was intrusted with the command of the war against the 
Cilician pirates ; and still more recently, when Cicero proposed to 
confer on C. Cassius the conduct of the war against P. Dolabella, 
the tenor of his commission allowed him to enter any province 
in pursuit of the enemy, and gave him superior power in that 
province to the magistrate by whom it was actually governed. 
The authority of the proconsuls in the provinces was entirely 
absolute under the old constitution, as they exercised supreme 
control over the military force, over the revenue, and over the 
criminal and civil jurisdiction ; and by extending this power to 
Italy, and even to Rome itself, a virtual sovereignty was in fact 
bestowed. Whatever might be wanting in the proconsular power, 
was at all events given in the title of " imperator," which was 
prefixed to the name of Augustus, as it had been to that of his 
uncle, and seems to have been equivalent to the name of " General 
of the Forces of the Commonwealth." By attaching a perpetual 
military command to the person of the emperor, and by allowing 
him to hold it in Rome as well as in the provinces, all the people 
were in effect subjected to martial law ; and it is well known that 
the power exercised by Roman generals over their soldiers was 
ever most arbitrary, insomuch, that, according to Cicero, "the Ro- 
man people in war obeyed their general as a king."^" Yet fur- 
ther, in addition to the powers of proconsul and imperator, Au- 
gustus enjoyed also all the authority formerly possessed by the 
censors. He would not, indeed, take the name of censor, but he 
received a title and power similar to that which had been bestow- 
ed on his uncle, and which Suetonius calls, " morum legumque 
regimen," the control of the manners and laws of the common- 
wealth. With regard to his control of the laws, it must be un- 
derstood, probably, to regard those laws which concerned the ob- 
jects of the censor's jurisdiction, such as the sumptuary laws, and 
those which related to marriage. His control of manners ren- 
dered him absolute master of the rank of eveiy citizen, as it ena- 
bled him to choose members into the senate, and to degrade them ; 

70 Noster Fopulus * * in bellosic paretut Regi. Cicero, de Republic^, I. 40. 



VIRTUAL CENSOR, AND TRIBUNE, FOR LIFE. 477 

to raise any plebeian to the equestrian order, or again to deprive 
him even of the poUtical privileges of a simple citizen.''^ There 
was hardly any point of private life which did not fall under the 
censor's cognizance. Not only might a man be questioned for 
any intemperance in eating and drinking, or for any scandalous 
irregularities of conduct, but any excessive sumptuousness in his 
establishment, and even, it is said, any neglect of his property, 
such as omitting to cultivate or improve his land,''^ subjected him 
often to the loss of the most distinguished rights of citizenship. 
For this reason, according to tradition, the duration of the censor's 
power had been reduced from five years to eighteen months,''^ 
as so great an authority could not be safely intrusted to any one 
for more than a very limited period ; and now that it was confer- 
red on Augustus for life, it was by no means one of the least of his 
imperial prerogatives. To the powers of proconsul, imperator, 
and censor, was added, moreover, that of tribune. By this, Au- 
gustus was not only enabled to stop at once, by his negative, any 
measure of the senate or people which he disapproved, but his 
person was rendered sacred ; and any violation of its sacredness, 
either in word or deed, exposed the offender to a complete religious 
and political excommunication, in which state he was devoted 
to some particular god,'^^ as if peculiarly marked out for his ven- 
geance, and might be killed by any man with impunity. Last of 
all must be mentioned the exemption from the authority of the 
laws, which Dion Cassius tells was bestowed on the emperors.''^ 
According to his account, Augustus was rendered abolutely de- 
spotic, inasmuch as he might dispense with any part of the code 
at his pleasure ; and this prerogative he instances as one of those 
few which were not borrowed from the usages of the old constitu- 
tion. But it has been reasonably supposed, that the Latin expres- 
sion '' legibus solutus," which was applied to persons enjoying a 
dispensation from some particular laws, combined with the real 
exemption from all the laws which was possessed by the later 
emperors, has misled Dion Cassius ; and that the exemption was, 
in fact, less comprehensive than he imagined. A dispensing 
power had been long exercised by the senate ; and we find that 
it was one of the measures of the patriotic tribune, 0. Cornelius,''^ 
in the year of Rome 686, to remove the abuses with which it was 
attended, and to enact that no dispensation should pass the senate, 

71 The " Mvarii," or persons expelled 'i'2 Aulus Gellius, IV. 

by the censors from their tribes, lost their ''^ Livy, IV. 

right of voting in the eonsitia, because it '''* Festus, in vocibus " Sacer," et " Sa 

could only be exercised by those who be- cratas Leges." 

longed to some one of the thirty-five ts LIII. 509. 

tribes. Their private rights and personal ts Asconius Argumentum in Ciceronis 

liberties were not at all affected by their Orationem pro C. Cornelio primam. 
degradation. See Niebuhr's Romische 
Gesehiehte, I. 384, &c., and IL 179. 



478 RIGHT OF APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE 

or, according to the legal phrase, " that no one should be released 
from the laws, legihiis solveretur^'' unless two hundred senators 
were present. Still later, in the year 709, M. Brutus had been 
excused by the senate from continually residing in Rome during 
his prsetorship, as required by law ; and he is accordingly said by 
Cicero to have been " legibus solutus."" We may conclude that 
the same exemption, from a compliance with the injunctions of 
many of the old laws, was also granted to Augustus ; and, indeed, 
if the fragments of what is called the " lex regia" are to be con- 
sidered as genuine and authentic, it is evident that the exemption 
was not universal.'^ 

It becomes here a natural question to ask, whether the right 
Right of appeal to C)f appeal to the people was not altogether extinct ; 
the people. ^^^ \\o\j the provisious of the Porcian law were 

evaded, which made it highly criminal to scourge or put to death 
any Roman citizen ? With regard to the first, we will endeavour 
to give the reader some notion of its nature, and of the cases in 
which it was allowed. In the earliest times it was no more than 
a part of the wild habits of savage life, where government being 
ill understood, and therefore apt to be rudely exercised, each man 
might appeal from the authority of the chief to that of the society 
at large ; the power of capital punishment, as distinguished from 
the taking away life in a quarrel or in anger, being one of the 
rights which the community did not choose to intrust out of their 
own hands. The appeal to the people was the first simple form 
in which a man was tried by his country ; and before the estab- 
lishment of independent judges, it was the only security against 
the arbitrary sentence of the magistrate. But as such an appeal 
could not be made on every occasion, the people deputed their 
power to judges specially appointed by themselves^^ (as in the 
case of the quaestores parricidii), or chosen at the beginning of 
every year by the praetors out of a whole order of citizens, some- 
times out of the senate alone, and sometimes from the senate, the 
equites, and the richer plebeians, according to the various enact- 
ments successively made on this subject. When an independent 
judicial power was established, the right of appeal to the people 
at large, could only be needless or mischievous, and therefore it 
gradually fell into disuse ; na^'', we doubt whether there was 
legally any appeal from the sentence of the select judges who sat 
with the praetor in criminal causes ; for Cicero attacks Antonius 
for proposing a law by which criminals condemned for rioting or 

7'^ Cicero, Philippic. H. 13. ^9 Pomponius.de Grig. Juris, quoted by 

78 Utique quibus legibus, plebeive scitis Creuzer, Romische Antiquitatem, 165,and 

scriptum fuit ne Divus Augustus, .... Heineccius, IV. tit. 18, c. 11, edit Hau- 

teneretur, iis &c. Imperator Caesar Ves- bold. See also the expression of Cicero, 

pasianus solutus sit. Apud Heinecciuni, de Legibus, HI. 12. Magistratibus judi- 

Antiq. Roman. Syntagma, L tit. 2, 67, cia dantur, ut esset populi potestas, ad 

edit. Haubold. quam provocaretur. 



GRADUALLY NARROWED-FINALLY LOST. 479 

treason by the ordinary tribunals were allowed to appeal to the 
people i^" and he complains that such an appeal was equivalent to 
the total subversion of all justice. Nor do we remember any in- 
stance in the later times of the commonwealth of a trial removed 
by appeal from the regular courts to the popular assembly, 
except in the case of C. Rabirius, u. c. 690 ; and Rabirius appeal- 
ed not from the decision of the praetor and the select judges, but 
from that of two special commissioners, appointed by the praetor 
instead of the people, contrary to the usual practice, to try the case 
by themselves. The right of appeal was thus become obsolete, 
if were not actually done away ; but at any rate it was rendered 
useless by the military power which the title of imperator confer- 
red on Augustus. It was an old maxim of the Roman law, that 
from the sentence of a general in the actual service there was no 
appeal ;^^ and in this consisted the plenitude of his power, for 
even if he might be questioned afterwards for an abuse of it, yet 
at the time there was nothing to check or limit it, and there is a 
wide difference between present protection and contingent future 
redress. As Augustus, therefore, was invested with military 
power both within and without the city, the right of appeal from 
his authority became extinct of course. Still, however, Roman 
citizens in the provinces, when not actually serving in the army, 
might appeal to Rome from the sentence of a provincial governor ; 
but Augustus himself, if we may believe Dion Cassius,^^ was 
constituted judge of all such appeals ; and we know, from a much 
higher authority,^^ that in the reign of Claudius they were regu- 
larly made to the emperor, without any allusion to the old consti- 
tutional power of the people. 

A remarkable obscurity hangs over the origin of the Porcian 
laws ; for it is not known with certainty by whom of the pordan laws, 
they were proposed, nor at what period they were Spl^n1s"hmenteSe'r 
enacted. It appears from Cicero that they were Augustus. 
three in number, brought forward by three ditferent members of 
the Porcian family ;^* but whether of the family of Porcius Lseca, 
or Porcius Cato, is still undecided. However, it is sufficiently 
known that these laws confirmed the right of appeal to the peo- 
ple, and forbade, under heavy penalties, that any Roman citizen 
should be scourged or put to death, of whatever crime he might 
have been guilty, if we except, perhaps, the wilful murder of a 



80 Philippic. L 9. Altera promulgata Cicero for his Utopian Commonv/ealth, yet 
lex est, ut et de Vi et de Majestate dam- this code is confessedly borrowed almost 
nati ad populum provocent, si velint. entirely from that which actually existed at 

81 Cicero, de Legibus, IIL 3, 4. Mill- Rome, — Omnium Magistratuum descrip— 
tiee, ab eo, qui imperabit, provocatio ne tio ; sed ea paene nostras civitatis, 5. 

esto ; quodque is, qui bellum geret, impe- 82 LL 457. 

rassit, jus ratumque esto. Although these '3 Acts of the Apostles, XXV. 10, 11. 

words are a part of the code devised by 84 De Republica, IL 3L 



480 OP THE PORCIAN LAWS, AND THE NATURE OF 

parent.^ 5 Thus the greatest pmiishment that could be legally in- 
flicted at Rome, was simple banishment, till Cgesar, in his dicta- 
torship, added the forfeiture of all property in the case of those 
convicted of wilful murder, and the half of it for all other offences.^^ 
Nay, even the punishment denounced by the Pedian law, passed 
u. c. 710, against the assassins of Csesar was no more than ban- 
ishment from Italy; so completely were Roman citizens ex- 
empted by law from suffering the penalty of death. It is gene- 
rally thought, however, that the provisions of the Porcian law 
did not extend to citizens actually serving in the army ; but this 
must be understood with considerable limitations. The old igno- 
minious method of punishment, by which criminals were first 
scourged with rods, and then beheaded with an axe (virgis caesi 
et securi percussi), could never be inflicted upon a Roman citizen 
under any circumstances. This is plain from the fact mentioned 
by Sallust,^'' that Q,. Metellus Numidicus, in the Jugurthine war, 
punished one of his officers in this manner, because, adds the 
historian, the offender was a Latin citizen : that is, he could not 
have so punished him had he been a Roman. We believe fur- 
ther, that a Roman soldier could not even be flogged on actual 
service ; and we are inclined to think that this was one of the 
provisions of the Sempronian law, De Militum Commodis, carried 
by C. Gracchus, in his tribuneship ; for we are told by Plutarch,^^ 
that M. Livius Drusus, one of his colleagues, in order to outdo 
him in proposing popular measures, brought forward a law to 
exempt the Latins from the liability to be flogged when serving 
as soldiers ; and although the passage in Sallust already quoted, 
shows either that this law was soon after repealed, or that Plu- 
tarch, as we rather believe, has assigned to it a wrong date, and 
ascribed it to a wrong author, yet its being proposed at all clearly 
proves that the Roman soldiers already enjoyed a similar exemp- 
tion, as no one would ever have thought of granting to the Latins 
immunities which were not possessed by the Romans themselves. 
Nor is our position refuted by the instances recorded in later 
times, of soldiers suffering death by running the gauntlet^' (fuste 
cajsi), for this was a punishment inflicted not by the general's 
lictors, but by the hands of the soldiers themselves, and was ex- 
pressive of the feelings of the army at large towards those who 
were guilty of cowardice, or of any other flagrant breach of mili- 
tary duty. In cases of mutiny, or any other crime which required 
an instant and terrifying example, a general would have ordered 
the offenders to be executed ; there being no appeal at the time 
from his sentence, and if evor he was afterwards questioned for 

85 See Cicero, pro Roscio Ameiino, 25. ^^ Auctor de Bello Hispaniensi apud 

86 Suetonius, in Caesnre, 42. Coesaris Commentar. 27. Velleius Pater- 

87 De Bello Jugurthino, 69. cuius, II. 78. 
83 InC. Graccho, 9. 



CAPITAL PUNISHMENT UNDER AUGUSTUS. 481 

his conduct, he would have urged the plea of necessity or pub- 
lic expediency, which was ever admitted as an excuse for any 
departure from the ordinary laws. And thus only can we recon- 
cile the extreme bloodiness of the proscriptions and occasional ex- 
ecutions of the Romans, with the excessive mildness, or rather 
weakness, of the letter of the constitution. When, soon after 
Caesar's death, a disorderly multitude used to assemble round his 
altar in the forum, and committed several outrages on the proper- 
ty of different citizens, P. Dolabella, who was then consul, attaked 
the rioters in a summary manner, and put numbers of them to 
death without any sort of trial, crucifying the slaves, and throw- 
ing the free citizens from the Tarpeian rock. This behaviour 
was applauded by Cicero as an act of salutary vigour j^" yet had 
the meanest of the citizens thus executed been brought to a legal 
trial under the severest of the existing statutes for the punishment 
of riots, he could have received no heavier sentence than that of 
exile. 

A system like this, in which the laws were so frequently su- 
perseded by acts of summary violence, was admirably calculated 
to^ serve the purposes of despotism. The Porcian laws existed 
unrepealed, but equally unregarded whenever it suited the inte- 
rest of the sovereign to violate them. How, indeed, could they be 
more signally violated by the emperors than they had been in 
innumerable instances under the old constitution ; not only in the 
proscriptions, but in the suppression of less alarming disorders, in 
the executions ordered by the senate after the deaths of the two 
Gracchi, in the punishment of the accomplices of Catiline, and in 
the severity which we have just noticed of P. Dolabella ? So 
much respect was shown to the forms of the constitution, while 
its spirit was violated, that in the infliction of the punishment of 
death some pains were taken to deprive it of the appearance of an 
execution, and to give it the character of an irregular but neces- 
sary act of policy or vengeance ; a sort of capital ostracism, in 
which the sufferer was treated more as an enemy than a crimi- 
nal, and his life was taken without any accompanying circum- 
stances of degradation. Hence a party of soldiers Avere so often 
employed as the ministers of death, instead of a regular execu- 
tioner ; and the sword instead of the axe was the weapon used, 
a distinction which continued to exist to a much later period, 
insomuch, that when beheading by the sword was recognized as 
a legal punishment, still beheading by the axe was looked upon 
as degrading and illegal. ^^ Hence the sufferers were so often al- 
lowed to choose their own mode of death, and were constantly 
permitted to be their own executioners. For all these acts, com- 

9" Philippic. I. 12. epist. ad Atticum, si Heineccius, Antiquitat. Roman. Syn- 
XIV. epist. XV. XVI. XVII. tagma, IV. tit. 18, 10. edit. Haubold. 



482 IMPERIAL PREROGATIVES OF WAR AND PEACE. 

mitted by the sovereign power on the alleged ground of public 
expediency, the practice of the old constitution furnished prece- 
dent and apology ; and the Porcian law still availed to save 
Roman citizens from the rods and axe of the lictor, from those 
cruel and ignominious scourgings which were inflicted so often 
by the Roman magistrates in the provinces, ^'^ sometimes as a pun- 
ishment and at other times as an instrument of torture to extort 
a confession from a prisoner before his trial. In process of time, 
as was natural, the infliction of capital punishment grew to be 
considered as legal and regular ; it began to assume the charac- 
ter of an execution ; and as the government became more de- 
cidedly monarchical, the cruel and degrading punishments, so 
congenial to tyranny, were engrafted upon the law of the empire. 
But, for the period with which we are now engaged, it is im- 
portant to observe how an excessive mildness in the laws defeats 
its own object, no less than excessive severity. Because the Ro- 
man constitution provided no adequate legal punishment for 
enormous crimes, men became reconciled to irregular inflictions of 
vengeance on the plea of necessity ; and thus exemplified the 
danger of looking with indiff'erence upon any departure from the 
written law, when necessity was as easily pleaded by their tyrants 
for the murder of Cicero, as for those of Saturninus, Cethegus, or 
Lentulus, 

Amongst the prerogatives possessed by Augustus, Dion Cas- 
icnperiai prerogatives ^i^-^^ mentious the right of making war or peace 

ofwar and peace. with whatCVCr UatloU hc tllOUght prOper,^^ rpi^jg 

arose out of the proconsular power which had been conferred on 
him, and from the immediate command which he exercised in all 
the frontier provinces of the empire. Wherever the dominions of 
the commonwealth came in contact with any foreign nations, 
there the whole civil and military authority belonged to Augustus 
as proconsul ; and if he possessed the power of making war or 
peace with the people who bordered upon his provinces, it was 
no more than had been commonly practised by the proconsuls of 
former times ; nor could Augustus act with a less restrained dis- 
cretion than his uncle had done in Gaul during the whole term of 
his command there, or than Crassus had exercised in his govern- 
ment of Syria, when he commenced his unprovoked attack upon 
the Parthian empire. 

It is further stated by Dion Cassius, that Augustus was the 
absolute master of the revenue, and that he was enabled to levy 
money for the public service by his sole authority. And here, 
perhaps, we may fitly lay before the reader some notice of the 
pecuniary resources of the Roman empire : of the taxes paid by 

02 St. Matthew, XXVII. 2G. Acts of 93 lUI. 508. 
the Apostles, XXII. 24. 29. 



OP THE ROMAN REVENUE. 4gg 

the people ; and of the general administration of the treasury. In 
doing this, we shall frequently go back to the history of an earlier 
period ; but the calm of the reign of Augustus allows us to turn 
our attention to many points connected with the internal state of 
Rome, which we have passed over amidst the press of wars and 
internal disturbances, through which our narrative has hitherto 
had to struggle. Once for all, however, we must remind the 
reader of the extreme difficulty of this part of our task, and re- 
quest his indulgence for the faults or omissions which we fear he 
will not fail to discover. We must draw our facts from scattered 
and scanty sources ; and it may often happen that some passage 
has escaped our notice, which, had we known it, might have 
taught us to qualify or to amend much that we had advanced. 
We have said this, indeed, nearly in the same words on a former 
occasion ; but we deem it not superfluous to repeat it again, not 
only to disclaim for ourselves pretension to a more perfect know- 
ledge than we possess, but to impress upon the reader the unsat- 
isfactory nature of many of those disquisitions in which historians, 
endowed with more eloquence than industry, have permitted 
themselves to indulge. As the lessons of history are the most 
valuable part of that wisdom which concerns our earthly welfare, 
so it is most important that they should not be rashly offered, but 
that they may be at once so full and so uncorrupted, as to furnish 
us with a trustworthy guide. And he who feels the deficiencies 
of his own performance may at least render some service to his 
readers, if he shows them how far they may safely rely on him, 
and does not attempt to mislead them by assuming that tone of 
self-satisfied confidence which will always impose upon the 
mass of mankind, however much the wiser few may detect and 
despise it. 

The revenue of the Roman people, before their dominion em= 
braced so many dependent provinces, arose chiefly out q^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 
of three sources :^* 1st, a property tax (tributum) levied revenue. 
directly upon every citizen, and proportioned to the amount of the 
property which he possessed ;^5 2dly, the rents or payments of what- 
ever kind which were received from the national domains, using 
this last term in its most extensive sense, as including not only 
lands in cultivation, whether arable or pasture, but also forests, 
mines, and buildings ; 3dly, the customs, including the duties levied 
at the different ports on all imported goods, and the tolls paid at 
all public ferries. Of these three, the property tax, or tributum, is 
said to have been discontinued after the conquest of Macedon by 
L. jEmilius Paulus, in the year of Rome 584 ;^^ that is, the reve- 
nue which the state received thenceforward from its conquered 

9t But see Niebuhr, I. 459.— Ed. 9« Cicero, de Officiis, II. 22, 

95 Livy, I. 43. 



484 OF THE NATURE OF THE NATIONAL DOMAINS. 

provinces, enabled it to relieve its own citizens from that species 
of impost which is ever most galling to the popular feeling. The 
second source of revenue, namely, the national domains, cannot 
be fully understood, without touching upon a field of inquiry, at 
once most interesting and most laborious, and which neither our 
limits nor our ability enable us fully to explore.^' All lands Con- 
or the nature of the qi-^ered iu War, surrendered by the inhabitants or ceded 
national domains, j^y treaty, bccame the property of the conquering peo- 
ple, who thus were not only the sovereign, but the landlord of the 
territories which they acquired. Sometimes this right was so far 
mitigated in practice, that the old inhabitants were allowed to i-etain 
their lands, as tenants, on payment of a rent to the conquering peo- 
ple as their landlord ; but sometimes, also, it was exercised in its 
widest extent, — the old proprietors were expelled altogether, and 
the land was disposed of according to the pleasure of its new mas- 
ters. In Grecian history there is an instance of the first of these 
methods of proceeding in the behaviour of the Athenians, after their 
conquest of Mitylene in the Peloponnesian war. The territory of 
the Mitylenseans was divided into a certain number of lots, on 
each of which a certain rent was levied, and the former proprietors 
continued to occupy their estates as before, but in the character 
of tenants instead of landlords. On the other hand, when ^gina 
was conquered, the inhabitants were sufiered to remain undis- 
turbed for a time in their old homes ; but on the breaking out of 
the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians thought proper to act upon 
their right of conquest more rigorously ; they expelled the ^gi- 
netans accordingly, altogether, from the island, and divided the 
lands amongst a certain number of Athenian colonists, who be- 
came its inhabitants for several years, till they were, in their 
turn, driven out by the Lacedaemonians after the battle of .^gos- 
potami. The Romans, in the same manner, made a difference in 
the treatment of the different nations whom they conquered ; but 

S'' For the groundwork of what follows justness of the views which they comma - 
on the subject of the national domains, the nicate, make us full of surprise that the 
writer has great pleasure in acknowledging same discoveries had never been made be- 
his obligations to the masterly work of fore. Niebuhr carries some hypotheses 
Niebuhr, and particularly to the excellent perhaps too ,far, and in some of his opin- 
chapter on the nature of the agrarian laws, ions may be led away by a fondness for 
II. 349,etseq. He is indebted to Niebuhr novelty; but these are faults which sue- 
also for his first acquaintance with the col- ceeding writers may easily correct, while 
lection of writers, De Re Agrarid, pub- they and the world in general derive per- 
lished by Goesius at Amsterdam, in 1674, petual benefit from the great excellences of 
and which is so little known in England, his work ; its surprising knowledge, and 
that he has found no allusion to it in any the eminent ability with which detached 
English writer on the Roman History notices of facts are brought together and 
whose works have fallen under his notice, made to illustrate each other, and the pen- 
Niebuhr's " Roman History" is one of etration with which he has discovered 
those great works of genius which throw principles of civil and religious law amidst 
at once a blaze of light over subjects before an apparent chaos of anomalous and un- 
obscure, and which, by the clearness and connected particulars. 



MODES OP DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL DOMAINS. 435 

in all cases they claimed a sovereignty over the soil, and in all 
cases, therefore, they derived from it a revenue. The peculiar 
mark of this sovereignty was the reservation of a right to a certain 
portion of the produce of the land, and this portion was generally 
the tenth or tithe. Even when the lands of a conquered country 
were restored, as it was expressed, to the old proprietors, (for by 
the act of conquest they were held to be instantly forfeited to the 
conquering people, and the right of the old inhabitants was im- 
mediately lost,) still the tithe of the produce was reserved. When 
they were not restored, they were either sold by the qusestors in 
lots of a certain size, or divided out among a certain number of 
the citizens ; or, not being regularly disposed of by the govern- 
ment, were occupied by individuals without any particular title, 
as they severally happened to take possession ; or, fourthly, were 
let on leases for terms of different lengths to farmers, who had the 
power of underletting them again either entire or in lots. In the 
second of these cases, and in that only, the full sovereignty of the 
land appears to have been granted, together with the occupation 
or enjoyment of it. When a colony was planted in a conquered 
country, and a division of lands made amongst the new settlers, 
according to the solemn forms transmitted through a long succes- 
sion of ages from the priests of Etruria, then the state resigned all 
its rights, and the lots thus given to each colonist became, in the 
fullest sense of the word, his freehold,®^ But every other mode 
of alienation was made with a reservation of the state's sovereign- 
ty ; a tenure more or less favourable was granted to the individ- 
ual, but the government retained its right to the tithes of the 
produce, and its power of planting colonies at a future period in 
the domains over which it did not think proper to exercise at pre- 
sent its full authority. Now, as the whole territory of Rome, to 
to speak generally, had been gained by conquest, the sovereignty 
of it was vested in the Roman people ; and with the exception of 
such portions as had been divided out into colonies, it was all 
subject to the payment of tithes. In process of time the whole of 
Italy became exempted from this burden by the gradual division 
of every part of the public land amongst the inhabitants of its va- 
rious colonies ; and when the Italians successively acquired the 

98 In the collection of writers, De Re ritiam vel terrenam Cupidinem, Terminis 

Agraria, to which we have before alluded, omnia scita esse voluit, quos quandoque ob 

there is a very remarkable fragment, as- Avaritiam prope novissimi octavi Sseculi 

cribed to Vegoia, and which is evidently datos sibi Homines Dolo malo violabunt, 

translated from an Etruscan original of contingentque atque movebunt. Sed qui 

the highest antiquity. It is so curious, contigerit moveritque Possessionem, pro- 

that the reader may not be displeased to movendo suam, alterius minuendo, ob hoc 

see a part of it here transcribed : — Scelus damnabitur a Diis," &c. p. 258. 

" Scias Mare ex ^there remotum. Cum How exactly does this agree with the 

autem Juppiter Terram Hetruriae sibi vin- very words of the Mosaic law, that " cur- 

dicavit, constituit jussitque metiri Campos, sed is he who removeth his neighbour's 

signarique Agros, sciens Hominum Ava- landmark." 



486 NO PUBLIC LAND EXEMPT FROM TITHES. 

rights of Roman citizens, all the land which had been given back 
after conquest to its old possessors/" as well as that which had 
been sold by the quaestors, assumed the character of the private 
property of Roman citizens, and thus was placed on a level with 
that divided out amongst the settlers of a colony, and became alto- 
gether freehold. But in the provinces all land, except that which 
belonged to any Roman colony, was subject to some payment to 
the government. In some instances a general land tax was levied 
over the whole province, as a sort of fine paid by the inhabitants 
for the renewal of their terra of possession, after their rights as 
freehold proprietors had been forfeited by the conquest of their 
country. But in other cases, where the province had been peace- 
ably ceded or bequeathed to the Romans by its former sovereign, 
as in the instance of the province of Asia, the inhabitants retained 
their former rights, and the Roman people only acquired the 
sovereignty or superiority over the country (if we may borrow a 
nearly analogous term from the Scottish law), which was signi- 
fied by the reservation of the tenth part of the produce as the in- 
variable property of the government. This claim upon the tithes 
existed, we believe, quite distinctly from the general land tax or 
fine levied upon some particular provinces ; and where that land 
tax was paid, the tithes were nevertheless paid also. ' In some 
instances we find that the provincial lands paid a seventh and 
sometimes a fifth part of their produce to the government j^"" and 
here it may be difficult to decide, whether this payment Avas still 
independent of the tithes, or whether it was made as an equiva- 
lent both for the tithes and the land tax or tribute. But in addi- 
tion to all these burdens, we have a long list of others which were 

89 Hyginus says expressly. " Agri qui II. 379. It is with the utmost diffidence 

redditi sunt non obligantur Vectigalibus, that we differ from so great an authority ; 

quoniam scilicet prioribus Dominis redditi but Hyginus says, that the tenure of the 

sunt," p. 205, edit. Goesii. But Cicero " agri quaestorii " was the same with that 

says as positively, that the conquered lands of the other lands of the Roman people ; 

in Sicily, which had been restored to their and Siculus Flaccus gives it as a definition 

old inhabitants, were regularly let by the of " lands belonging to the Roman people," 

censors ; that is, the tithes which they paid that its revenue belongs to the treasury, 

were regularly farmed. (Cicero, in Ver- Edit. Goesii, p. 2. However, as the lands 

rem, III. 6.) And Aggenus Urbicus lays sold by the quaestors were not very exten- 

it down as a general rule, that in the pro- sive, it is of the less consequence to ascer- 

vinces, " omnes etiam privati Agri Tributa tain minutely whether it was a sale of the 

atque Vectigalia persolvunt." Commen- sovereignty, or only of the possession of 

tar. in Frontin. p. 47, edit. Goesii. We the land forever, subject to the payment of 

suppose, therefore, that so long as the Ital- its tithes to the government, 
ians were foreigners to Rome, the lands ""' Hyginus, de Limitib. constituend. 

given back to them were subject to the 198, edit. Goesii. Creuzer distinguishes 

same burden as those which were restored these payments of the fifth or seventh parts 

to the states of Sicily. With regard to of the produce both from the tithes and 

the lands sold by the quaestors, Niebuhr from the land tax, Romische Antiquitatem, 

classes them with those divided amongst 265. But we know not on what authority 

the settlers of a colony, and considers them this statement arose, and it seems to us 

as entirely freehold. Romische Geschichte, somewhat doubtful. 



THE PUBLICANl. 487 

imposed by the provincial governors when their own avarice or 
the alleged exigencies of the public service required any extraor- 
dinary resources."" First, there was a general levy of money 
enforced over the whole province/"'^ corresponding perhaps to the 
feudal aids, and raised, we may suppose, by a per centage upon 
property. Then followed the most odious of all imposts, a poll 
tax, demanded alike of slaves and freemen ; and, besides this, 
other taxes upon houses or house-doors, '"^ and upon the columns 
which were so much used in the more expensive architecture of 
the ancients. Finally, there was a general impressment of sol- 
diers, seamen, and carriages, for the military and naval service, 
additional requisitions of corn for the maintenance of the troops, 
and of arms and military engines. Under these multiplied exac- 
tions, besides a charge altogether indefinite made by the proconsul 
or propraetor for the. maintenance of himself and all his inferior 
officers, it is no wonder that the provinces were overwhelmed 
with debt ; for the necessity of paying the taxes being immediate, 
the people were reduced to borrow money at an exorbitant inte- 
rest, and there were always wealthy Romans of the equestrian 
order at hand, who carried on a regular traffic in the distress of the 
provinces, and who were accustomed to lay out their money in 
loans of this kind, as they thus gained not only a very high rate 
of interest, but also an extensive influence over the individuals or 
communities who were indebted to them. 

In the dealings between the government and its subjects, the 
intervention of a third party was generally em- 
ployed. The revenues of every province were 
commonly farmed by wealthy individuals of the equestrian order, 
called by the well-known name of Pubhcani. As the senators 
were not allowed to engage in any sort of traflic, the equestrian 
order, consisting of all citizens not being senators, who possessed 
property beyond a certain amount, embraced almost the whole 
commercial interests of the empire ; and a favourite branch of 
their speculations was that of farming the revenues. As soon as 
a provnice fell under the dominion of Rome, a number of these 
adventurers proceeded to settle themselves in it, and to acquaint 
themselves with the extent of its resources. They then purchased 
of the censors the different taxes claimed by the government, — 
the land tax, the tithes, the poll tax, and the other subordinate 
imposts, and thus took upon themselves the whole risk and trouble 
of collecting them. In doing this they were armed with the full 

i"! Csesar, de Bello Civili, III. 31,32. ro as haivng been levied in Ciliciain the 

MS ImperatEE Pecuniae. year 701 : and by the manner in which 

los Ostiaria, Columnaria. The poll tax they are spoken of, they appear to have 

and house tax seem not to have been pe- been ordinarily levied there. Epist. ad Fa- 

culiarly confined to periods of great public miliares, III. epist. VIIL 

exigency ; for both are mentioned by Cice- 

32 



488 AUGUSTUS ESTABLISHES PROCURATORES. 

authority of the government by the officer who commanded in 
the province, miless he happened to have some quarrel with their 
order, in which case they probably found their business sufficiently 
difficult, and were losers rather than gainers by their contracts.'" 
But in ordinary cases the governor of the province and the publi- 
cani were well disposed to gratify one another ; for the equestrian 
order, after the Serapronian law had placed the whole judicial 
power in their hands, was a body not lightly to be offended ; and 
the condemnation of P. Rutilius, whose upright administration 
had checked the exactions of the publicani in Asia, was a lesson 
to future magistrates rather to share in the plunder of the farmers 
of the revenue than to endeavour to repress it. 

Under the old constitution the revenues were under the con- 
trol of the senate, to which bod}'- the quaestors, who acted as 
treasurers both at Rome and in the provinces, were obliged to 
submit their accounts. But the civil wars had created so large a 
military force throughout the empire, and had so dangerously 
taught the soldiers to know their own power, that it became most 
important to provide for them by regular means, lest they should 
again be tempted to listen to some new adventurer, and to renew 
the disorders which had prevailed for the last twenty years. 
Augustus therefore instituted a military treasury, '"^ over which he 
possessed supreme authority, as imperator or commander in chief 
of the army ; and for the support of this treasury he invented 
some new taxes, particularly a sort of excise duty of one per 
cent, on all articles exposed to sale.'"^ He enjoyed also the entire 
revenues of those provinces which were immediately subjected to 
his jurisdiction ; and even in those which were under the control 
of the senate, he had a treasury of his own, distinguished by the 
name of fiscus from the aerarium or treasury of the people, into 
which probably were paid those taxes which had been created 
for the especial support of the asrarium militare. In all the pro- 
vinces alike, the revenues which belonged to Augustus were re- 
ceived in his name by officers called procuratores ;'"'' a class of per- 
sons who at first were hardly considered as more than the agents 
or stewards of a wealthy individual, and who were accordingly 
selected not only from the equestrian order, but also from among 
the fieedmen ; \vhile the regular governors of the provinces, 
whether proconsuls or lieutenants of the emperor, were, witli the 
sole exception of the governor of Egypt, appointed exclusively 
from the senate. 

We here propose to notice, separately, the state of Italy and of the 
state of Italy and the different provinccs of the empire, under the govern- 
provinces. uicut of Augustus, as far as we have been able to col- 

iM Cicero, de Provinciis Consularibus, 5. '"^ Dion Cassius, LIII. 506. Conf. 
'"5 Suetonius, in Augusto, 49. Creuzer, Romischc Antiquitaten,218, 219. 

'« Tacitus, Annal. I. 78. 



STATE OF ITALY AND THE PROVINCES. 439 

lect materials for the picture. The name of Italy was 
now at last applied to the whole peninsula from the "^''' 

Alps to the Straits of Messina j^"^ and the inhabitants of the whole 
of this district had obtained the rights of Roman citizens. Their 
votes, however, were no longer to be given in the comitia at Rorne,^"^ 
but the magistrates of the different Italian colonies were to collect 
the votes of their fellow-citizens in their respective towns, and 
send them sealed up to Rome, there to be opened on the day of 
election in the Campus Martius. These colonies, it must be re- 
membered, occupied at this time nearly all the surface of Italy. 
It was the boast of Augustus that he had himself planted no 
fewer than eight and twenty ; a strange subject of exultation, 
when we consider that they were formed out of the soldiers of 
his army, and were planted in spots left desolate by the extirpation 
of their old inhabitants, who had suffered either under the first 
proscription of the Triumvirs, or under that fatal establishment 
of military tyranny which was created by the reduction of Peru- 
sia. The soldiers of a mercenary army are miserable elements 
out of which to form a civil society • and thus, instead of a people 
inheriting the soil from time immemorial, and blending, in one 
well-organized commonwealth, nobility and wealth and honest 
industry, the new possessors of Italy were an ill-cemented horde 
of dissolute adventurers, with no natural connexion with the spots 
on which they were settled, and with habits the most alien from 
those of good husbands, good fathers, or good citizens. We are 
told accordingly, that the free population of many parts of Italy 
was reduced to a very low point, '^" whilst the slaves were numer- 
ous, and the capital itself was overburthened with the crowd of 
needy citizens whom each successive civil war threw upon that 
common shore of nations. The north of Italy, however, was in 
a more flourishing condition ; there the military colonies had been 
far less numerous, and the inhabitants having lately acquired the 
rights of Roman citizens, and possessing natural advantages of 
the highest order in their soil and climate, were perhaps the most 
fortunately circumstanced of any people throughout the empire. 
In Patavium or Padua there were five hundred citizens rich 
enough to be ranked among the equestrian order. "^ The town 
carried on a great trade with Rome, supplying the capital with 
clothing, with the finest carpets, and with other articles of similar 
kinds to an immense amount, probably from its own manufac- 
tories. The woods of this part of Italy maintained also large 
droves of swine, '^^ which supplied the population of Rome with 
the largest proportion of their food ; and the vine was cultivated 
with great success, in proof of which Strabo instances the pro- 

108 Strabo, V. 1. "i Strabo, V. 1,§ 7. 

109 Suetonius, in Augusto, 46. "2 Strabo, 1, § 12. 
"0 Livy, VI. 12. 



490 SICILY, SARDINIA, AND CORSICA- 

digious size of the wine vats, rivalling, it seems, those of our 
London brewers, for they are described as being larger than houses. 
The coarser woollen cloths, which formed the dress of the house- 
holds of most of the people of Italy, were chiefly manufactured 
in Liguria and its neighbourhood ; whilst the sofest and finest 
wool was produced by the pastures of Mutina and Scultenna. 
Above all, it is said, that here was to be found a numerous free 
population, which provided the state with its best supply of sol- 
diers, whilst the rest of Italy was left exhausted and desolate, and 
Augustus was endeavouring to force its inhabitants to marry and 
rear families by the penalties and encouragements of the law. 

The island of Sicily had been the seat of one of the latest 
sicuy, Sardinia, and ^ivil wars, that bet wccu Augustus and Sex. Pom- 
corsica. peius, and it is said to have sufiered not only during 

the contest, but during its previous occupation by Pompeius ; the 
plundering and disorderly habits of his numerous seamen having 
proved, we may suppose, very mischievous to the inhabitants.^" 
Since that time Augustus had sent a colony of veterans to Syra- 
cuse, and a small portion of the former site of that famous city was 
again occupied and fortified. But the cities of Sicily were now 
become few and inconsiderable ; its population was small ; and 
almost the whole of its abundant produce was regularly sent to 
Rome for the maintenance of the people of the capital, A great 
part of the surface of the island was devoted to pasture for sheep, 
oxen, and horses ;^'* and the slaves, who were employed in taking 
care of them, had formerly, as we have seen, carried on a long 
and obstinate struggle against the Roman power. In the reign of 
Augustus they still infested the country, and particularly the 
neighbourhood of ^tna, with their robberies ; and Strabo men- 
tions a robber chief whom he himself saw torn to pieces by wild 
beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome, and who, before he was taken, 
had been at the head of a considerable force. The mountains of 
Corsica and Sardinia were in like manner occupied by wild tribes 
of barbarians, who kept up a constant system of plunder against 
the inhabitants of the more level country ; those of Corsica are 
described as so inveterately brutish, ^'^ that when taken and carried 
to the Roman slave market, their purchasers always repented of 
their bargain, however trifling the price they had paid for them; 
while the Sardinian robbers did not confine their depredations to 
their own island, but frequently made excursions to the opposite 
coast of Italy, and were enabled, in great measiu'e, to defy the 
Roman governors, in their own haunts, from the impossibility of 
keeping a military force exposed to the pestilential atmosphere of 
the wilder parts of the country. Amongst the Alpine tribes, to 

»»3 Strabo, VI. 2, § 4. "5 Strabo, V. 2, § 7. 

"* Strabo, 2, § 6. 



GAUL; ITS QUIET SETTLEMENT. 491 

the north of Italy, the same plundering habits had formerly pre- 
vailed, and even the Roman armies, which were stationed in their 
neighbourhood, had frequently suffered from their desultory at- 
tacks|;'^^ but Augustus, judging it most important to keep up a 
secure communication between Italy and the Transalpine pro- 
vinces, and having himself, on one oceasion, lost his baggage and 
several of his soldiers when crossing the mountains which they 
inhabited, determined to put an effectual stop to their incursions. 
He accordingly employed such vigorous measures against them, 
•that he extirpated the nation of the Salassi altogether, selling no 
fewer than forty-four thousand of them for slaves, eight thousand 
of whom were the warriors of the tribe. Three thousand Roman 
settlers were then sent to colonize the town of Augusta, or Aosta, 
at the very head of the valley of the Dorea Baltea, from which 
place two roads were carried across the Alps, the one over the 
Little Saint Bernard, which was made practicable for carriages, 
and the other over the Great Saint Bernard, which could be tra- 
velled only by mules. In consequence of these exertions, the 
whole neighbourhood was reduced to a state of perfect tran- 
quillity, and the communication with Gaul was carried on without 
molestation.^''' 

The condition of the important province of Gaul itself will be 
regarded with more curiosity. Its " Cicatrice " must 
still "have looked raw and red after the Roman 
sword," when Augustus first became the sof ereign of the empire ; 
for scarcely more than twenty years had elapsed since his uncle 
had for the first time completed its conquest. Yet in the reign of 
Tiberius, Strabo describes the inhabitants as already settled into 
habits of peaceful submission to the Roman power ; ' ^^ and 
he attributes it to their national character, which long retained 
the remembrance of a defeat, and if vanquished in one general 
contest, was cowed for ever. But the fact is, that the Gauls, 
when first attacked by Caesar, were by no means a nation ojf 
savages. They had regular governments,"^ were perfectly fa- 
miliar with agriculture, and were accustomed to pay the greatest 
veneration to their Druids, who professed, with whatever success, 
the study of moral and natural philosophy. Such a state of so- 
ciety, combined with the natural features of the country, which 
then, as now, was by no means favourable to the maintenance of 
a desultory and harassing warfare, insured the permanence of the 
conquest of Gaul as soon as it was once effected. The people 
were able to appreciate the value of the arts, and the commercial 
advantages which they derived from their conquerors. Even be- 
fore the invasion of Csesar, traders were in the habit of visiting 

116 Strabo, IV. 6, § 7. "» IV. I, § 2 ; 4, § 2. 

117 Strabo, IV. 6, § 7 ; and Pliny, His- "» Caesar, de Bello Gallico, VI. 11, &c. 
tor. Natural. IIL 20. 



492 ROMAN COLONIES IN GAUL. 

almost every part of the country, and had famUiarized the people 
with many even of the hixnries of civihzed hfe. But the Roman 
conquest must have greatly increased this traffic, hy enabhng 
merchants to transport their goods from one end of Gaul to the 
other with perfect security, and by bringing the whole country 
into direct communication with the wealth and commercial enter- 
terprise of the Roman empire. The great rivers with which 
France abounds were successfully errtployed to expedite this in- 
tercourse ;^^° and goods from all parts of the Mediterranean were 
conveyed by water up the Rhone and Saone, and from thence, 
after a short interval of land carriage, were again embarked on 
the Seine, and thus transported either to Britain or to all the dis- 
tricts on the northern coast of Gaul, bordering on the British 
Channel ; while the Loire and the Garonne afforded an equally 
convenient communication with the western parts of Gaul, and 
with the shores of the Bay of Biscay. In another point, also, the 
Gauls felt the benefit of their connexion with Rome. Great quan- 
tities of oxen, sheep, and pigs, were reared in all parts of the 
country j"'' and we are told that not only Rome itself, but most 
other districts of Italy, were supplied with coarse cloaks manu- 
factured of Gaulish wool, and with Gaulish bacon of most excel- 
lent quality, particularly from the hogs fed in Burgundy, Franche 
Comte, and Lorraine. There were also some favoured spots in 
Gaul, to which the Romans had communicated their own politi- 
cal privileges. Narbo, Yienne, and Lugdunum were Roman 
colonies, and enjoyed the advantages of the "jus Italicum" in its 
full extent ;'^^ that is, they were governed by their own laws and 
magistrates, and were not subject to the authority of the procon- 
sul of the province, and their land was considered private and 
freehold property in the full Roman sense of the term; it was, 
therefore, not liable to pay land-tax or tithes ; and it might be 
alienated by " mancipatio," that is, it might be sold in full sove- 
reignty, and with an indisputable title, a privilege which was pe- 
culiarly confined to the soil of Italy,'^^ and to those places in the 
provinces which, by possessing the "jus Italicum," were placed 
on the same footing as if they were situated in Italy. The lower 
privilege of the "jus Latii" was conferred on the inhabitants of 
NemansLis, or Nismes,'^^ and on the Con venae and Ausci in Aqui- 
tania, by which they also enjoyed an exemption from the autho- 
rity of the proconsul of the province ; and those who held any 
magistracy among them became ipso facto entitled to the full 

•20 Strabo, IV. 1, § 14. in his Dissertation " Ueber das Jus Itali- 

'21 Strabo, 1, § 2 ; 4, § 3. Caesar de cum" published among the Memoirs, and 

Beilo Gallico, IV. 2. read by him before th"^ Academy of Ber- 

122 See Haubold, Epicrisis Heineccii, I. lin in 1814 and 1815. 

Adpend. §97, 98 ; andCreuzer, Romisciie '23 See Liber Simplicii, apud Scriptores 

Antiquitaten, 263. This account of the de Re Agraria, 76, edit. Goesii. 

•'jus Italicum" was first given by Savigny, '24 Strabo, IV. 1, § 12 ; and 2, § 2. 



CHANGE OF LANGUAGE. 493 

rights of Roman citizens. These, however, were in the time of 
Augustus rare exceptions ; and the great majority of the inhabit- 
ants of Gaul shared largely in the miseries as well as in the 
benefits of subjection to the Roman empire. They were oppressed 
by all the burdens ordinarily imposed on the provinces, and suf- 
fered not only from direct taxation, but from that still heavier 
evil, to which we have before alluded, the frequent necessity of bor- 
rowing money at an exorbitant interest from the wealthy Roman 
citizens who were settled amongst them. Accordingly we find, as 
early as the reign of Tiberius, ^^^ that the whole of Gaul was over- 
whelmed with debt, and their sufferings from this cause led to the 
unsuccessful insurrection against the Roman power, which took 
place, about eight years after the death of Augustus, under Julius 
Florus and Julius Sacrovir, 

The total extirpation of the Celtic language, which was eifected 
throughout the whole of Gaul, during the continu- 
ance of the Roman dominion, could not have taken '^"^^° angmge. 
place till long after the reign of Augustus. But an earnest of the 
change was already exhibited in Gallia Narbonensis, which had 
been now a Roman province for more than a century ; for Strabo 
tells us,^^^ that the inhabitants of the left or eastern bank of the 
Rhone were even in his time no longer to be considered barba- 
rians, but were become Romans, both in their customs and in 
their language. Several important steps had also been taken 
towards the civilization of the more recently conquered provinces. 
Human sacrifices,'^'' and all rites of the Celtic worship which 
were at variance with the practices of the Roman religion, were 
strictly prohibited ; nor was more toleration shown to the barba- 
rous custom of carrying about the skulls of their enemies whom 
they had slain, and fastening them up as a trophy over their 
gates. Besides, the Romans found the Gauls already disposed, 
in some measure, to adopt their institutions, from the popularity 
which the arts and literature of Greece had obtained amongst 
them. Their knowledge of these was derived from the famous 
Ionian colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, a city which was at this 
time the Athens of the western part of the empire, '^^ and not only 
served as a school of instruction to the Gauls, but was frequented 
by many Romans of the highest distinction, who resorted thither, 
instead of to Greece, to devote themselves to literature and phi- 
losophy. So strong an effect had been produced by the Mas- 
silians upon the Gauls in general, that the Greek sophists found 
in most parts of Gaul a liberal reception, and were often engaged, 
by particular cities, to open schools of public instruction for their 
citizens, while the Greek character began to be adopted wherever 

i!i5 Tacitus, Annal. III. 40. Galliarum >25 IV. 1,§ 12. 
Civitates, ob magnitudinem Mris alieni, '^7 IV. 4, § 5. 
rebellionem cceptavere. 'ss jy, i,§ 5. 



494 SPAIN ; ITS THREE PROVINCES. 

there was occasion for writing. "^^ The Cehic, it appears, was 
not a written language ; and the Druids refused to commit to 
writing any of the learning which they possessed and taught, 
giving their instructions only by word of mouth, and obliging 
their scholars to trust to their memories alone for retaining 
them. This circumstance, doubtless, contributed to the gradual 
adoption of the Roman language throughout Gaul. As soon as a 
fondness for literature was introduced, the Gauls, finding nothing 
to gratify it in their own language, applied themselves of neces- 
sity to that of their conquerors. This co-operating with the influ- 
ence which Latin necessarily enjoyed from political causes, intro- 
duced it universally, in time, amongst the higher classes ; while 
the existence of domestic slavery made it much more necessary 
for the lower orders to acquire the language of the higher, than is 
the case in modern Europe. Thus the negroes in the West In- 
dies learn, universally, the language of their masters ; whilst in 
Wales and Ireland the gentleman often accommodates himself to 
his poorer neighbours, and consents to address them in Welsh or 
in Erse, because they choose to continue ignorant of the English. 
The different parts of the neighbouring country of Spain pre- 
sented a striking contrast to each other. The whole 
^^^' Peninsula was at this time divided into three pro- 

vinces,^^" known by the names of Baetica, Lusitania, and Hispa- 
nia Tarraconensis ; the first of which was governed hj a procon- 
sul appointed by the senate, and the two latter by the lieutenants 
of Augustus. Baetica comprised nearly the same 
^**"^' extent of country which is at present included 

within the limits of Andalusia and Grenada. It had been already 
conquered by the Carthaginians before the second Punic war, 
and in the course of that war was made a part of the Roman 
dominion by P. Scipio Africanus, after the expulsion of its former 
masters. The Romans had thus possessed it for about two hun- 
dred years, and it was now one of the most flourishing portions 
of their empire. Its inhabitants had almost lost their original lan- 
guage,^^' and in their speech, and dress, and manners, were be- 
come assimilated to their conquerors. The valley of the Bastis, 
or Guadalquivir, is described by Strabo as rivalling in richness 
and fertility the most favoured countries in the empire ; its trade 
with Rome was exceedingly great, and carried on directly with 
Ostia and Piiteoli, the ports in the immediate neighbourhood of 
the capital ; the ships employed in this commerce were of the 
largest size of any that frequented the Mediterranean ; and the 
articles exported in them were numerous and valuable, consisting 
of corn, wine, oil, of the finest quality, wax, honey, salt fish in 

129 CfEsar, de Bello Gallico, VI. 13. i3i Strabo, III. 2. p. 404. 380. 389, &c. 

130 Dion Cassiu3 LIII. 503. Strabo, III. 
4, p. 444, edit. Siebenkees. 



B^TICA. 495 

immense quantities, pitch, minium or cinnabar, '^2 a,nd coccus 
ilicis, an insect of the cochineal species, and used by the ancients 
for their best scarlet dyes, as we now use the cochineal of Mexico. 
The Spanish wool then enjoyed the same high reputation which 
it 'still does to this day ; great quantities of it, both in the raw and 
manufactured state, were exported to Rome ; and so highly was 
the Spanish breed of sheep esteemed, that the rams were ordina- 
rily sold for a talent, '^^ or 193^. 155. of our money. Above all, 
we should notice the mineral riches of Spain, which exceeded, 
in value and in quantity, all that were known to exist in any part 
of the world. We read of gold obtained partly from the mines, 
but more brought down in small particles by the streams from 
the mountains, and extracted by carefully washing the sand and 
gravel in which it was contained ; and mention is made also of 
mines of silver, lead, tin, iron, and copper. Of the towns of Bae- 
tica, the most distinguished were the Roman colonies of Corduba 
and Hispalis (Cordova and Seville), and Gades, or Cadiz. This 
place had been founded at a very remote period, by a colony from 
rpy-pg.134 their Phoenician extraction however did not induce the 
inhabitants to bear the Carthaginian dominion with willingness ; 
but, on the contrary, they took an early opportunity to conclude 
an alliance with Rome,^^^ even before the downfall of the Cartha- 
ginian power in Spain, and became thus, according to the usual 
nature of alliances between a stronger and a weaker state in the 
ancient world, a dependency of the Roman people. In the civil 
war provoked by Caesar's rebellion, the people of Gades espoused 
his cause with zeal, and expelled Pompey's officer from their 
town ;^3® in return for which, if we may believe Dion Cassius,^" 
Caesar bestowed upon them the privileges of Roman citizenship. 
They found at any rate an effectual patron in their countryman 
L. Cornelius Balbus, the nephew of that Balbus who had been 
presented with the freedom of Rome by Pompey, for his services 
in the contest with Sertorius, and who has been mentioned before 
as one of the most confidential friends of Caesar, and as one of the 
first instances of a man, by birth a foreigner, rising to the rank 
of consul at Rome. Balbus enlarged the city of Gades, '^^ and 

132 The minium (sulphuret of quicksil- See Pliny, Histor. Natural. XVI. 8 ; and 

ver) belonged to the government, and, with XXXIII. 7. 

other productions of the mines, was farm- i33 Strabo, ibid, 

ed by the publicani. The price, however, 13* Velleius Paterculus, I. 2. 

at which it was to be sold was fixed by 135 Cicero, pro Balbo, 15, 16. The lan- 

the government at 15.s. 8d. the pound guage of the treaty ran, " Majestatem 

avoirdupois ; but the publicani made a populi Romani comiter conservato" (soil, 

large profit by adulterating it. The coc- populus Gaditanus). 

cus ilicis was found so plentifully on the i3S Cassar, de Bello Civili, II. 20. 

evergreen oak, (quercus coccifera,) that 137 XLI. 164, edit. Leunclavii. 

Pliny says the poorer Spaniards were ena- i38 gtrabo, III. 5, p 451, edit. Sieben- 

bled to pay half their tribute by the money kees. 
which they got from the sale of this insect. 



496 LUSITANIA AND HISPANIA TARRACONENSIS. 

built a dock-yard on the main land immediately opposite to the 
island in which the town is situated. In the reign of Tiberius, 
Gades was one of the most flourishing cities in the empire ; and 
it is said to have rivalled Patavium or Padua, in containing five 
hundred citizens, rich enough to be reckoned amongst the eques- 
trian order. It carried on an extensive trade both in the Medi- 
terranean and in the Atlantic, and the size and number of its 
merchant vessels are both especially noticed. 

The two remaining provices of Spain were far from being in 
Lusitani£ and Hispa- ^^o advauccd a statc as Bsetica. The Celtiberians 
nia Tarraconensis. indeed, wlio inhabited the central and eastern parts 
of the Peninsula, were partially becoming more civilized ;'^^and 
some of them, like the people of Beetica, had learnt to wear the 
Roman dress, and to adopt the Roman manner of living. But 
the tribes which bordered on the Atlantic and on the Bay of Bis- 
cay still retained in great measure their original wildness. The 
Cantabri, whose territory corresponded with the modern provinces 
of Biscay and Asturias, had been only lately attacked by Augus- 
tus in person,'" in the year 728; and being then partially con- 
quered, had soon afterwards renewed the contest, and had been 
more effectually subdued by L. jS]milius, in the year following, 
and again by M. Agrippa, in the year 734. In the reign of Tibe- 
rius, '^^ the continued presence of a large Roman army in their 
country (for out of three Roman legions stationed in Spain, two 
were quartered amongst the Asturians and Cantabrians), had 
produced a partial effect upon them : some of them had entered 
into the service of Rome, and some of the tribes were learning the 
first elements of civil society. But the existence of the Basque 
language to this very day, undestroyed by the revolutions of eigh- 
teen centuries, sufficiently proves that in these remote districts 
the language and manners of Rome were unable to take deep 
root ; and therefore, at the period of which we are writing, no 
more had probably been done than to reduce the hostihties of the 
natives to mere acts of robbery in the mountains and forests, and 
by quartering Roman soldiers among them to set before them a 
view of more civiUzed institutions. The coast of the Mediterra- 
nean presented naturally a different picture. '^'^ Here were culti- 
vated the vine, the fig, and the olive ; and here \Vere the famous 
cities of Carthago, or Carthagena, and Tarraco, or Tarragona, 
both Roman colonies. On this coast also there grew in great 
luxuriance a species of broom, which was largely used in rope- 
making, and which was exported for that purpose to all parts of 

>M Strabo, III. 2, p. 404 ; and 4, p. '<' Stmbo, III. 3, p. 416; 4, p. 445. 
446. Tacitus, Annal. IV. 5. 

"0 Dion Casaiug, LIII. 513. 516. 528. i« Strabo, III. 4, p. 437.429. 
Horace, Carm. III. ode 14 ; and Episto- 
lar. I. epist. 12. 



MAURITANIA. 497 

the empire. In the interior may be noticed the recently-planted 
colonies of Augusta Emerita or Merida, Pax Augusta or Badajoz, 
and CsBsar-augusta or Zaragoza, which Strabo instances as a 
proof of the improved condition of the countries in which they 
were situated. "^ 

The northern coast of Africa from the Atlantic ocean to the 
harbour of Saldas,"* which lies a few miles to the. 
eastward of Algiers, was known by the general ^"" ^°'*' 

name of Mauritania, and was at this time governed by an African 
prince, on whom Augustus had conferred the sovereignty ; this 
was Juba, the son of that Juba who had so zealously supported 
the constitutional party in the civil war between Caesar and Pom- 
pey, and the husband of one of the daughters of Antonius and 
Cleopatra. But notwithstanding these connexions, Juba had 
served Augustus in the civil wars,!*^ and had acquired his favour; 
and as the greatest part of his father's dominions now formed 
part of the Roman province of Africa, he received the sovereignty 
of Mauritania as a sort of compensation. From the port of Sal- 
das to the borders of Cyrenaica, the whole country which had 
been formerly possessed by the kings of Numidia and the repub- 
lic of Carthage, was now united under one government, and was 
called the province of Africa."^ It was one of the provinces 
assigned to the senate and people, and was governed by a pro- 
consul, with a military establishment of two legions ;'^'' and it is 
known to have been one of the countries which sent the greatest 
quantity of corn to the Roman market. '^^ But of the details of 
its condition very little is recorded. We find by the Fasti Tri- 
umphales, that the proconsuls of this province frequently laid 
claim to the insignia of a triumph, on account of victories gained 
over the barbarians of the interior : we hear of a Roman colony,'^' 
lately founded by Augustus, close to the site of the ancient Car- 
thage ; and we are told that private individuals possessed here 
immense estates, ^^^ chiefly woodland and pasture, on which many 
villages were built, and a numerous population was maintained 
around the villa of the proprietor or lord. Perhaps from this very 
cause the towns in Africa were few and unimportant ; the old 
ones had been mostly destroyed, either in the Jugurthine war, or 
in the contest between Caesar and the constitutional party, under 
Scipio and Cato : and as the land seems mostly to have been 
granted or sold away to individuals, there was less room for those 

"3 III. 2, p. 404. Sat. II. ; Sat. III. 87. Carm. I. ode I. 

i« Strabo, XVII. Tacitus, Annal. 10. III. ode XVI. 30. 

IV. 5. 149 Strabo, XVII. 3, § 15. Appian, 

H5 Dion Cassius, LI. 454 ; LIII. 514. Punica, 136. 

146 Strabo, XVII. 3, § 25. is" Aggenus Urbicus, de Controversiis 

14T Tacitus, Annal. IV. 5. Agrorum, apud Scriptores de Re Agraria, 

"8 Tacitus, Annal. XII. 43. See also edit. Goesii, 71. 
several passages in Horace ; for instance, 



498 OF THE EASTERN OR GREEK PROVINCES, 

military colonies, which in other parts of the empire were laying 
the foundations of so many cities, famous in after generations. 
Still we know that Africa carried on a considerable trade, for 
Strabo,*5i -^yj^gi^ -^yjshing to represent the great number of the 
merchant vessels employed in the commerce between Italy and 
the south of Spain, observes that it almost rivalled the number of 
the vessels engaged in the commerce of Africa. 

In proceeding eastward to the small province of Cyrenaica, we 
Of the eastern or eotcr upou a ucw dlvision of the empire, and one 
Greek provinces. most strougly distinguished from all the countries 
which we have hitherto noticed, by the general use 
yrenaisa. ^^ ^^^^ Greek language. The Greek provinces, if 

we may so call them, were in a very different condition from those 
in the west, which, owing their civilization to the Romans, bor- 
rowed from them alone their language and their institutions. But 
in the east, society had long since assumed a settled form, which 
in its internal details was but little affected by the conquests of 
Rome. Gyrene, originally a colony from the little island of Thera, 
in the ^Egaean,'^^ after enjoying some centuries of independence 
and prosperity, was conquered by Ptolemy, '^^ the son of Lagus, 
the first of the Macedonian kings of Egypt, about the year of 
Rome 430. It was afterwards, like Cyprus, conferred from time 
to time, as a separate principality, on some member of the royal 
family ; and a prince, named Ptolemy Apion,'*^ who had obtained 
it in this manner, bequeathed it by his will to the Roman people, 
in the year of Rome 657. The lands which had belonged to 
him as king,'^^ thus became the demesne of the Roman people, 
and not being divided out amongst a certain number of citizens, 
as was the case when a colony was planted, they were farmed in 
the mass by the publicani, mostly as grazing lands, and were en- 
croached upon from time to time, like the other national lands 
throughout the empire, by the proprietors of the surrounding 
estates. In the time of Augustus, Cyrenaica was united with 
Crete, '^'^ under the government of the same officer, and the two 
countries together formed one of the prfetorian provinces which 
had been assigned to the jurisdiction of the senate and people. 
It may be remarked , as a proof that Cyrenaica was the western 
limit of the Greek provinces, that the Jews, who had spread 
themselves over all the eastern part of the empire, are known to 
have been very numerous at Gyrene,'^'' but are not mentioned as 
having established themselves in the adjacent provinces of Afri- 

>5i III. 2, p. 387. Histor. Natural. XIX. 3. Hyginus, de 

152 Herodotus, Melpomene, 145, et seq. Limitibus constituend. 210. Script. Rej 

'53 Diodorus Siculus, XVIII. 602, et Agrar. edit. Goesii. 

seq. edit. Rhodoman. i5s Strabo, XVII. 2, § 25. 

151 Livy, Epitome, LXX. ist Acts of the Apostles, II. 10 ; VI. 

155 Tacitus, Annal. XIV. 18. Pliny, 9. Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 786. 



EGYPT. 499 

ca, or in any of the provinces westward of Italy. To Cyrene 
itself its connection with Egypt would naturally have led them ; 
and they formed there a body so considerable as to have a syna- 
gogue specially appropriated to them in Jerusalem. 

We have already mentioned some of the precautions taken by 
Augustus to prevent the great resources of Egypt 
from being placed at the disposal of any one who ^^'"' 

might use them for the views of his own ambition. The gov- 
ernor of Egypt was always selected from the equestrian order, 
that is, from a class of citizens who enjoyed the comforts of an 
affluent private station, without taking any part in civil or mili- 
tary offices. Next under the governor was an officer invested 
with the administration of justice ;'^^ and after him came the pro- 
curator of the emperor, whose business was simply to receive and 
collect all sums which were due to the imperial treasury. The 
military establishment consisted at first of three legions, besides 
nine cohorts, employed on permanent garrison duty at particular 
points of the country ; but as it was soon found that nothing was 
to be dreaded either from any disposition to revolt in the Egyp- 
tians themselves, or from the power of the yet unconquered neigh- 
bouring nations, it was thought safer to intrust the governor of so 
wealthy a province with the least possible military force, and the 
army in Egypt was consequently reduced to two legions. '^9 So 
wretched had been the condition of the country under some of 
its recent kings, that the Romans are said to have introduced 
niany beneficial reforms ; and the trade with India, which was 
carried on by way of the Red Sea, increased prodigiously under 
their dominion, notwithstanding the heavy duties which they 
took care to impose on all articles imported into, or exported from, 
Alexandria.'^" There were two modes of communication be- 
tween Egypt and the Red Sea ; one was by that famous canal, 
which had been begun in the remotest times by Pharaoh Necho, 
again resumed by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, and finally com- 
pleted under the government of the Ptolemies ; and which leav- 
ing the Nile near the southern point of the Delta, after a some- 
what circuitous course, joined the Red Sea at the town of 

158 Strabo, XVII. 1, § 12. h SiKaioSdrris. three legions and nine cohorts, (XVII. 1, 
The procurator was called 'iSio; 'Koyos, or § 12,) and of Tacitus, who rates them 
"private account," which seems almost only at two legions (Annal. IV. 5). Un- 
like a cant term bestowed on him by the less indeed Tacitus spoke only of the 
Egyptians. The separation of the judicial number of Roman soldiers, and Strabo 
power from the supreme civil and military meant to include the auxiliaries ; a suppo- 
administration of the province, appears to sition which seems supported by his dis- 
be another proof of the excessive jealousy tinguishing the nine cohorts which were 
with which the power and wealth of Epypt employed in garrison duty, by the epithet 
were regarded by the emperor. " Roman," as if all the troops of the three 

159 vVe thus attempt to reconcile the legions were not entitled to that appella- 
different statements of Strabo, who states tion. 

the troops in Egypt to have consisted of is" Strabo, XVII. 1, § 13. 25. 45. 



500 EGYPT. 

Arsinoe, close to the modern town of Suez. The other was by- 
land, across the Desert, from Coptos on the Nile, situated a few 
miles to the north of Thebes, to the ports of Berenice and Myos 
Hormos ; and the route was now supplied with water, partly by 
digging wells, and partly by reservoirs, which preserved the 
occasional supply from the clouds. All the goods which were 
introduced into Egypt from the east by either of these channels, 
were necessarily conveyed to Alexandria, where they were again 
reshipped and exported to Italy and the rest of the empire. It 
may be observed, that two out of the three ships in which the 
apostle Paul performed his voyage from Palestine to Rome,'«' 
were ships of Alexandria, which seems to indicate that vessels 
from that place sailing direct to Italy were more easily to be 
found than from any other port in the eastern provinces. Besides 
the various commodities of the east, Egypt exported to Rome 
great quantities of corn,^^^ together with the best writing mate- 
rials then known in the world, the famous papyrus, the two finest 
sorts of which were named the Augustan and the Livian,'^^ in 
compliment to the emperor and his wife, Alexandria having 
been long the capital of a great monarchy, and now becoming the 
seat of a commerce so extensive, was probably the second city 
in the Roman empire. But of all its buildings and institutions, 
the Museum deserves most particular notice. It formed a part of 
that large division of the city which the successive kings of 
Egypt had inclosed within what may be called the precincts of 
their court ;^^* a space equal to nearly a third of the whole of 
Alexandria ; and which may be compared to the parks of Lon- 
don, and to that quarter of the town in which our palaces, our 
public offices, and our courts of justice, are concentred together. 
The museum comprised v/ithin it tlie great library of Alexandria, 
an ornamented walk, and a large building, which served as a 
refectory or college hall to the literary men who belonged to the 
institution. It may perhaps surprise some of our readers to hear 
that there was a society at Alexandria \vhich very closely resem- 
bled the colleges of our English universities. There was a head 
or master of the museum, who was also a priest, appointed by 
the government ; and there was an endowment for the mainte- 
nance of the members of the college, who lived at the museum, 
and were accustomed to have their meals together, as we have 
seen, in their common hall. A similar assemblage of literary 
and scientific men had formerly existed at Heliopolis ; and Strabo 
was shown the apartments in wliich, according to the tradition 
of the guides, Plato and Eudoxus had resided for several years, 
to learn wisdom from the sages of Egypt.'*^ But this institution 

161 Acts, XXVII. 6 ; XXVIII. 11. '" Pliny, Histor. Natural. XIII. 12. 

162 Tacitus, Annal. XII. 43. Histor. •" Strabo, XVII. 1,§8. 
III. 8. 48. i« XVII. 1, § 29. 



SYRIA AND ASIA. 



501 



was gone to decay in the time of Augustus, and the buildings 
were occupied only by the persons engaged in the care of the 
sacrifices, and by those who instructed strangers in the forms 
which they were to observe when they came there to worship. 
In another point however Egypt had undergone little change since 
the days of Herodotus. The scandalous licentiousness of some 
of the festivals was still faithfully preserved ; and the canals 
which led from Alexandria to the famous temple of Serapis, at 
Canopus,'«^ were thronged day and night during the period of 
the festival with an innumerable concourse of people, indulging 
themselves without restraint in the Avorst excesses of debauchery. 
From Egypt to the iEgeean Sea, the countries included under the 
general names of Asia Minor and Syria, were in the 
time of Augustus portioned out into a number of divi- 
sions and subdivisions, which it would be of little importance to 
enumerate minutely. The principal of these were the two great 
provinces of Syria and Asia ; the former governed by the lieu- 
tenants of the emperor,'^'' the latter by proconsuls, in the name of 
the senate and people. Next to these in importance were the 
united provinces of Pontus and Bithynia, which also belonged to 
the senate and people: Galatia with Pisidia and Lycaonia,'68 
which belonged to Augustus, and Cilicia, which also was gov- 
erned by a lieutenant of the emperor. Cappadocia still retained 
a nominal independence, ^^^ under its king Archelaus, till about 
four years after the death of Augustus ; as did Judaea under 
Herod, till a somewhat later period. Lycia enjoyed its own 
laws'''" and a free municipal government; and there were a 
great many detached and subordinate districts, which were gov- 
erned by petty kings, dynasts, tetrarchs, and rulers of various de- 
signations, but which were all subject in fact to the control of 
the Romans, and the condition of which was altered from time to 
time at the pleasure of the emperor, as it was understood that all 
countries of this description were under his especial authority."' 
Throughout the whole of this part of the empire, Greek was com- 
monly spoken and understood by the higher orders in all the 
large towns ; but there was a great variety of native languages 
and dialects which still maintained their ground,"'^ and an almost 
equal variety of manners prevailing amongst the different people 
and tribes. Many of the mountain districts were infested by rob- 
bers, who made frequent inroads upon the lowland country in 
their neighbourhood ; while many of the cities, such as Antioch, 
Tyre, and Tarsus, in Syria and Cilicia, together with most of 

16S Strabo, XVIT. 1, § 16, 17. 169 Tacitus, Annal. II. 42. 

1" Dion Cassius, LIII. 504. Strabo, "° Strabo, XIV. 2, § 3. 
XVII. 3, § 25. m Strabo, XVII. 3, § 25. 

163 Dion Cassius, LIII. 514. Strabo, "2 gee Acts II. 9, &c. 
XII. 5, § 1. 



502 GREECE— MACEDONIA AND ACHAIA. 

those in the province of Asia, were in a state of high civilization, 
cultivating the arts of peace successfully. But the Roman colo- 
nies were few, and few of the cities, in comparison with the west- 
ern provinces, enjoyed the rights of Roman or of Latin citizenship. 
The burden of taxation was moreover great, "^ and much was 
often suffered besides from the tyranny and exactions of the pro- 
vincial governors. On the other hand, the evils of war were no 
longer felt or dreaded ; four legions only were stationed in the 
whole of Asia Minor and Syria,^^^ and most of these were placed 
near the Euphrates, to guard the frontiers on the side of Parthia. 
The internal communications between different parts of the coun- 
try were mostly become secure and easy ; and the piracy, which 
had been once so great an evil on the coasts of Cilicia and Pam- 
phylia, Avas now so reduced as to offer no obstacles to the trade 
or general intercourse which was carried on by sea. 

The condition of Greece was apparently one of great desola- 
Greece-Macedonia tiou aud distt'css. It was divided in its widest ex- 
andAchaia. ^gj^^f [y^^Q ([^q |;^yQ provinccs of Macedonia and 

Achaia, both belonging to the jurisdiction of the senate and peo- 
ple. Both had suffered severely by being the seat of the succes- 
sive civil wars between Ceesar and Pompey, between the Trium- 
virs and Brutus and Cassius, and lastly between Augustus and 
Antonius. Besides, the country had never recovered the long 
series of miseries which had preceded and accompanied its con- 
quest by the Romans ; and between those times and the civil 
contest been Pompey and Ceesar, it had again been exposed to all 
the evils of war when Sylla was disputing the possession of it 
with the generals of Mithridates. In the time of Augustus there- 
fore it presented a mournful picture of ruin. If we go through 
Peloponnesus, and inquire what was now the fate of cities and 
states once so memorable, we shall find that Messenia and Arca- 
dia'"^ were almost reduced to a desert, and that Laconia was 
greatly decreased in population, although its capital, Laceda^mon, 
enjoyed the title of a free state,^'^ and the Laconians, or inhabit- 
ants of the country, and ev^en the helots, had been long relieved 
from that abject dependence upon the Spartans to which they 
were in the old times subjected. The most flourishing towns 
were Corinth and Patrse,'"^ both of them Roman colonies, recently 
founded ; the former by Ceesar, who peopled it with a number of 
freedmen ; and the latter, one of the military colonies of Augus- 
tus, planted after the battle of Actinm. Northward of the Isthmus 
the scene was equally melancholy. It was from a view of the 
ruins of the once famous cities of the Saronic Gulf, of ^gina, and 
Piraeus, and Megara, that Ser. Sulpicius derived that lesson of 

"3 Tacitus, Annal. II. 42. 54. '^^ Strabo,5, § 5. 

"* Tacitus, Annal. IV. 5. »" Strabo, 6, § 23 ; 7, § 5. 

"» Strabo, Vm. 4, §11; 8,§1- 



MACEDONIA AND ACHAIA. 5Q3 

patience under domestic calamities with which he attempted to 
console Cicero for the loss of his daughter Tullia.'^^ ^tolia and 
Acarnania were become wastes, ^''^ and the soil was devoted to 
pasture for the rearing of horses. Thebes was hardly better than 
a village,"^ and all the other towns of Boeotia, except Tanagra 
and Thespige, were reduced to the same condition. Epirus was 
depopulated, 's' and occupied by Roman soldiers ; Macedonia had 
lost the benefit of its mines, which the Roman government had 
appropriated to itself, and was suffering from the weight of its 
taxation ; but it appears not to have undergone so great a deso- 
lation as the neighbouring province of Achaia. Of the burden of 
taxation imposed on this part of the empire, there are two re- 
markable proofs on record. Strabo himself happened once to 
touch at the little island of Gyarus,'^^ which he describes as a 
place containing no town, and inhabited merely by fishermen. 
When the vessel was again putting to sea, one of the fishermen 
came on board, and took his passage to Corinth, teUing Strabo 
and his fellow-passengers that he was going on a deputation from 
his countrymen to Augustus, who happened to be in Greece at 
that time, to request some relief from taxation ; for the inhabit- 
ants of Gyarus paid, he said, an hundred and fifty drachmas {41, 
I65. lO^d.) annually, one hundred of which would be more than 
they were able to spare. It appears also that the provinces of 
Macedonia and Achaia, '^^ when they petitioned for a diminution 
of their burdens, in the early part of the reign of Tiberius, were 
considered so deserving of compassion, that they were transferred 
for a time from the jurisdiction of the senate to that of the empe- 
ror ; a change which tended to relieve them, by subjecting them 
only to the exactions of the imperial procurator, instead of the 
joint demands of the procurator and proconsul ; for the emperor's 
fiscus or private treasury received a portion of the revenues in 
the provinces belonging to the senate, but in those which were 
particularly under himself, there was no officer employed by the 
senate to collect taxes for the public treasury or eerarium. Mean- 
while the change of circumstances had rendered Greece far less 
capable of affording a large revenue than in the days of her early 
greatness. Then the naval power of the Greeks, the uncommer- 
cial habits of the Persians, and the general barbarism of the west 
of Europe, bestowed upon Greece an extensive trade with all 
parts of the Mediterranean ; and vessels from the coasts of Ionia 
found their way not only to the Adriatic, '^^ to Sicily, and to Italy, 
but also to the ports of Gaul and Spain, and even through the 
Straits of Gibraltar to the riches of Tartessus and Gades. Be- 

"8 Cicero, ad Familiares, IV. epist. V. '^^ x. 5, § 3. 

"9 Strabo, VIII. 8, § 1. '83 Tacitus, Annal. I. 76. 

'»o Strabo, IX. 2, § 5. '^4 Herodotus, Clio, 163. Melpomene, 

'S' Strabo, VII. 7, § 3. 153. 

33 



504 GENERAL STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

sides, the high military character of the Greeks procured them 
constant employment in the service of the Persian satraps of 
Asia; and there were many officers who there amassed, like 
Xenophon, a considerable fortune, and returned with it in the de- 
cline of life to settle in their own country. This was particularly 
a resource for the Arcadians ;'^^ and money was thus poured into 
that wild and barren district of Peloponnesus, which the poverty 
of its soil and its inland situation would never have allowed it to 
o-ain from agriculture or trade. But now the commerce of the 
Mediterranean had passed into other hands, and the power of 
Rome had transferred to Italy the reputation of being the best 
school of soldiers. In literature and philosophy Greece, it is 
true, still retained her pre-eminence ; and in these respects her 
excellence was appreciated over a greater portion of the world 
than ever, as we have seen the cities of Gaul eager to secure the 
services of Greek philosophers for the education of their people. 
But although the honour of this general celebrity was reflected 
chiefly upon Greece properly so called, yet it was far otherwise 
with the profit of it. Massilia, Tarsus, and Alexandria, sent out 
over the Roman world as many public and private instructors as 
proceeded from the schools of Athens ; and if we run over the list 
of Greek writers of the times of the early emperors,'^^ we shall 
find very few of them to have been natives of Greece itself. In 
this manner Greece was left without any adequate means of re- 
pairing the devastations of war, or the exactions of the Roman 
government, and was thus already fallen into decay, while most 
other parts of the empire were as yet flourishing in unbroken 
vigour. 

While we have thus attempted to lead our readers step by 
General state of the Step through uiost of the couutrics whlch wcrc now 
Roman Erapue. subject to Rouie, our task has been little else than 
to collect together some of the scattered notices of their condition 
preserved by the writers of the times, and to repeat them as we 
have found them recorded. But we naturally aspire to something 
more than this ; the Augustan age is so famous in the history of 
mankind, that we wish to form to ourselves some general impres- 
sion of it ; we would fain compare it with that state of society 
which we ourselves are witnessing, and examine to what degree 
of physical and moral improvement it had attained. It requires 
also our especial attention, because this splendid period was suc- 

'** Thucydides, VII. 57. Of the Greeks "* Strabo was a native of Amisus, in 

who served under the younger Cyrus, in Pontus ; Dionysius was of Halicarnassus, 

his attempt to dethrone his brother, more in Caria ; Appian, of Alexandria ; Lucian, 

than half were Arcadians and Achaians; of Samosata, in Comagene ; Diodorus, of 

and of these the Arcadians formed by far Sicily. We hardly remember, indeed, any 

the greatest portion. Xenophon, Anaba- of the later Greek writers, except Plutarch, 

eis, V. 10 ; I. 1, 2. who was properly a native of Greece. 



STATE OF PROPERTY. 5(35 

ceeded in the course of a few generations by a very general and 
remarkable decline ; and many centuries elapsed before the tide 
of civilization began again steadily to flow, after having been so 
long upon the ebb. It can be only by an attentive observation of 
the Augustan age itself, that we can at all hope to discover the 
causes of the phenomena which followed it ; and so, perhaps, to 
learn whether there is any just reason to dread their recurrence ; 
whether the great improvements of our own days may at some 
future period be again cut short, and the full stream of knowledge 
forced back once more to its original and scanty channel. 

In order to arrive at any just notions of the physical condition 
of a people, our attention must mainly be directed 
to the state of property. Where the means of ere- "^ ^^"^"^ 
ating wealth are wanting, there must be general wretchedness ; 
where it is inadequately secured, the means of creating it are 
crippled ; where it is very unequally divided, the splendour of 
individual fortunes may often make us forget the poverty of the 
great bulk of the people. The physical means of creating wealth 
were abundantly enjoyed in the Roman empire, as it possessed 
some of the most productive soils and favourable climates known 
in the world, with excellent water communication from one ex- 
tremity of it to the other. The moral means of industry and skill 
were to be found in very different perfection in different parts of 
the empire ; but we know that all the useful arts were successfully 
cultivated, and that the luxuries as well as the comforts of life 
were to be procured by any one who was rich enough to purchase 
them. In some districts, in several provinces, property was lia- 
ble to very frequent assaults from the robber tribes who inhabited 
the neighbouring mountains ; and in most of the provinces, per- 
haps, the weight of taxation was felt as a serious evil ; but on the 
other hand, the miseries of war were removed : and although the 
government and its officers interfered greatly with the profits of 
property, yet the actual right of possession was secured by regu- 
lar laws, and Avas rarely disturbed by the violence of power. But 
the great misfortune of the Roman empire was the excessive ine- 
quality with which wealth was divided. We know enough of 
the splendid villas and magnificent establishments of the nobility, 
and of the wealthier members of the equestrian order; but the 
lower classes of free citizens at Rome were in the mean time sup- 
ported, in great measure, by the largesses of the emperor;'^'' and 
after all, from the decay of agriculture in Italy, any continuance 
of stormy weather which detained the usual supplies of corn from 
Africa, Spain, or Egypt, threatened the capital with a scarcity of 
bread. The fortune necessary to qualify a man for the equestrian 
order, was 400 sestertia '^^ (32291.), and in the time of Augustus 

18' Suetonius, in Augusto, 41, 42. Ta- Jss puny^ Histor. Natural XXXIII. 1, 
citus, Annal. II. 87 ; IV. 6 ; Histor. IV. 2. Horace, Epist. I. i. 58. 
38. 



506 STATE OP PROPERTY IN ROME AND IN THE PROVINCES. 

there were not four thousand citizens in Rome, exclusive of the 
senators, whose property amounted to this sum ; and there were 
only two towns in the empire, Gades and Patavium, which could 
produce five hundred citizens who possessed it. And this is ren- 
dered credible by a speech ascribed to L, Philippus, who was 
consul in the year of Rome 662, and who declared that there 
were not, at that time, two thousand citizens in the common- 
wealth Avorth any tiling.'^' In fact, when we read of the enor- 
mous riches possessed by some individuals in ancient history, by 
the kings of Babylon and Persia at an earlier period, and after- 
wards by the emperors and some of the great nobility of Romej 
we could not reasonably credit the statements which are given^ 
if we did not consider that this splendour was produced by the 
vast concentration of wealth in a few hands, and that it is in no 
respect an index of the general prosperity of the people at large. 
The great number of slaves kept in opulent families, and the 
practice of employing them in various trades for the supply of 
many of the common articles of life, was a great injury to the 
class of shopkeepers ; and even in the liberal arts and profes- 
sions, such as architecture and medicine, the high nobility were 
so much in the habit of having architects and physicians among 
their own slaves, that the respectability as well as the profits of 
the free citizens of those and similar professions were necessarily 
lessened. The miseries of one immense portion of the whole 
population, the slaves themselves, need not to be particularly 
dwelt upon. When the slave market was so abundantly sup- 
plied as it was in Rome, the value of a slave, as an article of 
property, could not be considered very highly ; and nothing but 
this selfish motive was likely to restrain masters in general from 
ill usage and cruelty : for the tendency of our nature to abuse 
absolute power, was aggravated in Rome by the utter indifference 
felt with regard to the fate of a slave, and by the want of some 
restraining and humanizing principles of morals. Something of 
this same indifference extended itself also to the condition of the 
people of the provinces, and subjected them often to a tyranny as 
insulting as it was oppressive. It is mentioned indeed, to the 
praise of Augustus, and of the early part of the reign of Tibe- 
rius,"" that the cruelties and exactions of the provincial magis- 
trates were greatly checked by them ; that the subjects of Rome 
were protected from the rods of the lictors, and from confiscations 
of their property. And Augustus was the author of one most im- 
portant reform, by assigning to the governors of provinces a cer- 
tain fixed salary,"' instead of allowing them, according to the old 
practice, to lay an arbitrary charge upon the inhabitants for the 

"» Cicero, de Officiis, II. 21 m Dion Cassius, LIII. 506, 

•s" Tacitus, Anna!. TV. 6. 



OP THE INTELLECTUAL STATE OF THE EMPIRE. 507 

anaintenance of themselves and their establishment. Yet the 
mere ordinary administration of justice towards the provincials 
was, at the best, harsh and summary ;'^^ and it was, perhaps, ren- 
dered more so by the strong contrast between their condition and 
that of a Roman citizen, whose liberty even yet was fenced round 
against all subordinate tyranny by the jealous laws of the old 
commonwealth. 

If we regard the effects of the political constitution of the em- 
pire in another Kght, it will lead us by an easy transition from 
the physical to the moral condition of the people. It may be 
doubted, whether ail the improvements of modern civilization 
could diffuse life and activity through so vast a body as was now- 
united under the government of Augustus. Much less was this 
actually accomplished, without an established conveyance for let- 
ters, without public carriages for travellers, and without circula- 
tion of newspapers. The Romans had excellent roads, it is true, 
as the Persians had had before them ; and like the Persians, they 
had relays of horses placed at certain distances, for the conve- 
nience of forwarding couriers, or other officers of the government. 
But these were of no benefit to the common traveller, who was 
obliged to find the means of conveyance for himself,^^^ and who 
was forced to limit his day's journey by the distance which could 
be performed by the same horses. Add to this, that the difference 
of language between the eastern and western provinces created a 
barrier between them, which at all times was an obstacle to their 
perfect union, and at a later period rendered their separation easy 
and natural. Those countries which were most remote from 
the capital, lost all the advantages of independent government, 
and their inhabitants were brought up to a condition of unavoid- 
able helplessness ; while at the same time their imperfect inter- 
course with the heart of the empire, prevented them from deriving 
from it their due portion of nourishment, or from receiving any 
adequate return for the wealth and industry which were continu- 
ally drawn from them to Rome. 

Meanwhile a taste for literature was becoming fashionable in 
the western provinces, as it had been long in the of the inteiieetuai 
eastern; and we have seen that the cities of Gaul state of the empire. 
were in the habit of hiring Greek sophists for the public instruc- 
tion of their people. But the expensiveness and consequent 
rarity of books was an invincible obstacle to the general diffusion 

'»« See Acts XVI. 22. 37 ; XX. 24. 
'®^ Nunc mihi curto 

Ire licet mulo, vel, si libet, usque Tarentum, 
Mantica cui lumbos onere ulceret, atque eques armos. 
Horace, Sat. I. vi. 104. 
No man would have talked of going to Tarentum on his dock-tailed mule, carry- 
ing saddle-bags, if he could have had the convenience of a good coach, to transport 
him in half the time, and with infinitely greater ease and comfort. 



508 OF THE INTELLECTUAL STATE 

of knowledge. It is mentioned of one of the literary men of these 
times,"^ that he had read in the province of Syria a great number 
of the works of an earlier period, which continued to be known 
there, because they were not superseded, as at Rome, by the mul- 
titude of modern publications. And Horace speaks of his works 
being carried into Spain and Africa only as Avrapping-paper for 
merchandise, '55 when they had lost their popularity at Rome. 
The consequence of this state of things was, that men of litera- 
ture formed a distinct profession in the empire, which was follow- 
ed for the sake of deriving from it a means of subsistence, but 
that the bulk of the people were left in a very general ignorance. 
What has been preserved to us of the writings of these times, 
has proceeded mostly from men who lived by their pen, or by 
giving instructions to their pupils, not from persons conversant 
with the business of actual life, from statesmen and soldiers, or 
men of independent fortune, such as were Cicero, Ceesar, and the 
elder Cato,. or such as was Tacitus a few generations later. 
Hence the total want of intelligent books of travels, and the low 
state of experimental philosophy and political economy. The 
study of words, however dignified by the titles of Grammatica 
and Rhetorica, was but a poor education for any man ; yet to this 
an excessive attention was directed, and youth were taught to 
admire the purity of a writer's style, or the musical arrangement 
of his sentences, instead of observing the value of his facts, or 
the wisdom of his opinions. Oratory in particular, which in the 
best days of Greece and Rome had been far too highly apprecia- 
ted, was now become a worthless study, and a mere waste of time 
and ingenuity, since the practical occasions for its exercise were at 
an end. It is, therefore, to us no wonder at all, that when all 
kinds of public disasters assailed the empire, the fair show of 
knowledge which had just gilded the surface of the Augustan 
age, should have been utterly worn away. Separated as it was 
from the habits and concerns of the practical part of the commu- 
nity, it died away with the patronage and general tranquillity 
which had fostered it. It was but a rich man's luxury, which 
they who were hourly trembling for their lives had no leisure to 
care for. For after all, if we look at the most famous writers of 
the Augustan age, of what description shall we find them ? The 
highest eminence which they attained was in poetry ; yet even 
in this it is an excellence most suited to an artificial age, and not, 
perhaps, the best suited to win the ears of the people at large 
when literature was no longer in fashion. In history the famous 
work of Livy is below mediocrity ;'" and the reputation which it 

'»♦ Marcus Valerius Probus, of Berytus. ifold deficiencies, arranged under the sev- 

Suetonius, de Illustribus Grammaticis, 24. eral heads of " Ignorance of the old Con- 

"* Epist. L epist. XX. 13. stitution," " Ignorance of Military Topo- 

"*" A tolerable specimen of Livy's man- graphy," " Want of Judgment," "Care- 



OP THE EMPIRE. 599 

has enjoyed is the best proof of the long continued and pernicious 
influence of the schools of grammar and rhetoric, which taught 
men to admire eloquent language, and to consider it as a com- 
pensation for ignorance and shallowness of judgment. In morals, 
in political science, in all the various branches of experimental 
philosophy, what do we owe to the Augustan age ? But happily 
for mankind, the wisdom of Providence was now preparing a 
knowledge the very opposite to that which we have been consider- 
ing, a knowledge as unpretending and generally useful as the 
other was ostentatious and trifling ; which was fitted for the real 
business of life, and was received by persons of every condition ; 
which struck root as deeply as the literature of the Augustan age 
had been scattered superficially ; which continued its substantial 
benefits through revolutions which laid every thing else in ruins, 
and which preserves to this day its indestructible power of bene- 
ficent activity. 

But the mere intellectual advancement of a people is of little 
importance in comparison with their moral knowledge of right 
and wrong ; and whether the literature of the Augustan age was 
generally valuable or not, the Romans might still have possessed 
a good state of public and private morals, and therefore might 
have been happily circumstanced with regard to the grand con- 
cern of human life. The great questions of the end of all our 
actions, and the nature of our several duties, were canvassed by 
the philosophers of every sect ; and in the public lectures of those 
philosophers, such subjects formed the principal part. When a 
parent, well versed in these inquiries, became himself the instruc- 
tor of his son, he was enabled to give him a moral education of 
no mean excellence ; and the young man who, in addition to the 
conversation and example of his father, received from him such a 
guide as the great work of Cicero, de Officiis, addressed by him to his 
son, possessed, in many respects, a rule of conduct which required 
little further improvement. But neither were all parents philoso- 
phers, nor were philosophers the ordinary teachers of the great 
mass of the community. The common elementary schools of 
Rome, from which the majority of the people derived their whole 
education, were schools of reading and of arithmetic, ^^'' and of 
nothing else 5 for the masters were men of humble station, unac- 
quainted with the writings of the philosophers, and quite unable to 
venture by themselves into all the difficulties with which the chief 
good of man, and the nature of his duties, were then enveloped. 
Under such circumstances men's characters are formed partly by 
the influence of the society in which they live, and partly by 

lessness ," &c. with numerous instances '®' Horat. Sat. I. iv. 72. De Arte Po- 
of each, is given by Wachsmuth, in his etica, 325. 
Early History of the Roman State, 33, e£ 
seq. 



510 OF THE INTELLECTUAL STATE OF THE EMPIRE. 

themselves. Some virtues are always congenial to human nature 
in theory, however much selfishness may obstruct the practice of 
them ; and these were often beautifully displayed in the lives of 
men of amiable dispositions, who wished to live up to the best of 
their knowledge. But unfortunately there are many vices also, 
of which the practice is far more natural to man than the theory 
is repugnant ; and into these the force of inclination and the 
sanction of universal custom draw almost every one. It is in 
such points especially that an authoritative rule of life is wanted^ 
which being once acknowledged, may save common men the 
trouble of making out their duty for themselves, and may lead 
them at once to the true practical conclusion without the risks or 
the difficulties of the previous inquiry. But in the greater parts 
of the Roman empire no such authority was to be found. In this 
respect the popular religion had utterly failed ; superstition, ac- 
cording to the necessary course of things, was closely connected 
with and encouraged a complete moral carelessness ; and whilst 
the high and pure doctrines so often inculcated by the oracles and 
choral songs of an earlier period were neglected or scorned, the 
follies and sensualities of polytheism continued to flourish even 
with increased vigour. The oracles had lost all their authority, '^^ 
a loss which Strabo ascribes to the influence of the Romans, who 
preferred their own natural modes of inquiry into futurity, by 
consulting the Sibylline books, the entrails of victims, the flight 
of birds, and the phenomena of the atmosphere. But the change 
probably was greatly for the worse ; for when the oracles were 
in vogue, they were consulted not only as prophets but as prac- 
tical directors ; and however much we may be resolved to charge 
their predictions with collusion and imposture, there are yet speci- 
mens of their moral doctrine preserved,'*^ which exhibit a purity 
and a wisdom scarcely to be surpassed. Nor did the philosophers 
retain and communicate these sparks of true religion when they 
were become extinct elsewhere. On the contrary, notwithstand- 
ing their many and great excellences as expounders of the duties 
of man to man, they were all agreed in one maxim, which amounts 
to a complete practical atheism f°'' the opinion, namely, that noth- 
ing was to be feared from the anger of God, because it was con- 
trary to the divine attributes that He should be the cause of pain 
to any one. By this doctrine they removed the greatest check 
upon wickedness which has been ever devised for it ; for to the 
mass of mankind to say that God could not or would not punish, 
was the same thing as to say that He did not exist. It was a 
virtual denial of hi.s moral government, the only point in his 
nature which it greatly concerns his creatures to be acquainted 

"8 Strabo, XVIT. 1, § 43. 200 Cicero, de Officiis, III. 28, 29. 

'*' Sec particularly, Herodotus, Clio, 
158, 159, and Erato, 86. 



OF THE EFFECT PRODUCED IN THE EAST BY THE JEWS. ^n 

with. Thus while philosophy took away the best sanction of 
human conduct, and while those who could not be taught by 
philosophers were left to form their principles for themselves, or to 
pick them up from the opinions of the world, the morals of the 
people were in a state of great corruption. Of the sensualities 
which were universally practised, and of the excessive grossness 
of manners which naturally flowed from them, the writings of 
every author of the times, and still more strikingly, perhaps, the 
paintings and other embellishments of the houses which have 
been discovered at Herculaneum, offer proofs the most incontesta- 
ble. But it is equally instructive and less disgusting to dwell 
rather on the entire absence of those virtues and feelings which 
operate with such extensive usefulness in the countries of modern 
Europe. Charity and general philanthropy were so little regard- 
ed as duties, that it requires a very extensive acquaintance with 
the literature of the times to find any allusion to them. There 
were no public hospitals, no institutions for the relief of the infirm 
and poor, no societies for the removal of abuses, or the improve- 
ment of the condition of mankind from motives of charity. 
Nothing was done to promote the instruction or the lower classes, 
nothing to mitigate the miseries of domestic slavery, and far less 
to stop altogether the perpetual atrocities of the kidnapper and the 
slave market. The selfishness of human nature was thus spared 
its most painful sacrifice ; and he who was most largely endowed 
with the gifts of fortune, was taught only to abstain from doing 
active injury, and to enjoy the good things which he possessed in 
a life of social and intellectual gratification. 

But there was one part of the empire in which a better know- 
ledge had been slowly working its way, and must or the effectproriuced 

, ^, ... , ■', j° -jii ir ^ intheeastby theresi- 

by this tmie have produced considerable enect. denceofthejews.and 

iitr 1 1 J 1 J ^1 i ii T the Greek tranelation 

We have already observed that the Jews were of the oia Testament. 
widely scattered over the eastern provinces ; and as they adopted 
the language which was most prevalent around them, the Greek 
translation of the Old Testament, commonly known by the name 
of the Septuagint, was the form in which they were most familiar 
with their Scriptures. Intercourse with the Jews, and an acquaint- 
ance thus gained with the contents of their law and of the 
writings of their prophets, gave birth, throughout Syria and Asia 
Minor, to a class of persons who are called in our translation of 
the Acts by the name of " the devoutj''^"' and who, without think- 
ing themselves bound to conform to the national peculiarities of 
the Jewish worship, had yet acquired those true notions of the 
divine nature and attributes, and of the duties which God de- 
mands of man, which are so largely contained in the Old Testa- 

201 XVII. 4. 17. See also X. 2 ; XIII. in our Version, XIII. 43 ; XVI. 14 ; XVIIl' 
50. And the same word is used in the 7. 
Greek, although it is differently translated 



512 OF THE FAMILY OF AUGUSTUS. 

ment. The effect of this knowledge on those who profited by it, 
was to produce the very virtues in which the world was general- 
ly most deficient — devotion and charily f'^^ and by these means 
a large portion of the people was in some degree prepared for the 
doctrines of a still more perfect law, which were a few years 
afterwards introduced among them by the Christian apostles. 

Here then our review of the state of the Roman world must 
terminate. Deficient as we well know it to be from the imperfec- 
tion of our own knowledge, it will yet serve, perhaps, to show 
what were the most striking differences between the condition of 
society in those times and in ours, and to point out on how much 
less firm a foundation civilization was then built than we may 
hope is the case now. When, however, we reflect on the point 
of time at which this sketch terminates, other thoughts, we con- 
fess, are foremost in our minds, the expression of which we do 
not feel called upon entirely to restrain. About fourteen years 
before the death of Augustus, Jesus Christ was born into the 
world, and in less than twenty years afterwards the first founda- 
tions of the Christian society were laid. Henceforward the 
Roman empire acquires, in our eyes, a nearer interest ; as a coun- 
try to which we were before indifferent becomes at once endeared 
to us, when we know it to be the abode of those whom we love. 
In pursuing the story of political crimes and miseries, there wilt 
be henceforth a resting place for our imaginations, a conscious- 
ness that, amidst all the evil which is most prominent on the re- 
cords of history, a power of good was silently at work, with an 
influence continually increasing ; and that virtue and happiness 
were daily more and more visiting a portion of mankind, which 
till now seemed to be in a condition of hopeless suffering. The 
reader who has accompanied us through all the painful details 
presented by the last century of the Roman commonwealth, will 
be inclined, perhaps, with us, to rejoice in the momentary con- 
templation of such a scene of moral beauty. 

It now only remains that we give some account of the family 
ofthe family of 0^ Augustus, and conclude this memoir with some 
Augustus. particulars of his own private life. We have al- 

ready mentioned his marriage with Livia, the wife of Tib. Nero, 
in the year 716 ; and that he had at that time one daughter, 
named Julia, the child of his former marriage with Scribonia. 
As he had no children by Livia, Julia remained his only heiress, 
and the choice of her husband became a matter of great import- 
ance. She was first married to her cousin Claudius Marcellus, 
the nephew of Augustus by his sister Octavia,'^"^ and the person 
celebrated by Virgil in those famous lines of the sixth ./Eneid, for 

2"* Sec the character of the centurion 203 Tacitus, Annal. I. 3. Suetonius, ire 
Cornelius, Acts X. 2. Augusto, 63, et seq. 



OP THE FAMILY OF AUGUSTUS. 



513 



which Octavia so largely rewarded him. But Marcellus dying 
young, and without children, Augustus selected for the second 
husband of his daughter his oldest friend and most useful adhe- 
rent, M. Yipsanius Agrippa. This marriage seemed to answer . 
^1 his wishes, for Julia became the mother of five children, Caius, 
Lucius, Julia, Agrippina, and Agrippa Postumus, so called be- 
cause he was born after his father's death, which took place in 
the year 741. Caius and Lucius were immediately adopted by 
their grandfather, and assumed the name of Csesar ; before they 
arrived at the age of manhood they were distinguished by the 
title of " principes juventutis," or " chiefs of the youth ;" they 
were marked out as consuls elect, to enter upon that office as 
soon as they arrived at a fit age ; they were sent to the different 
provinces and presented to the armies, as the heirs of the emperor ; 
their education was conducted in a great measure by Augustus 
himself, and they were his constant companions at table and on 
his journeys. But all his hopes in them were marred by their 
successive premature deaths. Lucius Csesar, when on his way 
to take the command of the army in Spain, was taken ill and 
died at Massilia, about the year 754 ; and Caius Csesar, who 
commanded the army on the frontiers of Parthia, having been 
wounded in Armenia, and returning slowly homewards towards 
Italy, died about eighteen months after his brother, at the town 
of Limyra, in Lycia.'^"^ Meanwhile their mother, Julia, had been 
married, for the third time, by her father, after the death of 
Agrippa, to Tiberius Claudius Nero, the son of Livia ; but when 
Caius and Lucius Caesar were grown up to manhood, and were 
in the height of their favour with their grandfather, Tiberius, for 
whatever reasons, thought proper to withdraw from Rome to the 
island of Rhodes, where he lived in the greatest retirement, and 
during a part of the time in a sort of disgrace, for the space of 
more than seven years. During his absence, his wife, Julia, was 
guilty of such gross infidelities to him, that Augustus himself 
divorced her in the name of his son-in-law, and banished her to 
the island of Pandataria, off the coast of Campania,^"' where she 
was closely confined for some time, and treated with the greatest 
rigour ; nor would Augustus ever forgive her, or receive her into 
his presence, although he afterwards removed her from Panda- 
taria to Rhegium, and somewhat softened the severity of her 
treatment. After the deaths of Caius and Lucius Caesar, Tiberi- 
us was adopted by Augustus as his son, in the year 756,2"« and 
with him M. Agrippa Postumus, now the only surviving son of 
M. Agrippa. But Agrippa Postumus is represented as a youth 
of a brutal and intractable temper jz"^ and Livia, to favour her 

20* Velleius Paterculus, II. 102. 206 Velleius Paterculus, II. 103, 104. 

205 Tacitus, Annal. I. 53. m Tacitus, Annal, I. 3. Suetonius, 65. 



514 ANECDOTES OF AUGUSTUS. 

son's interests, so exaggerated his faults, and so prejudiced his 
grandfather against him, that he, too, hke his mother, was 
banished from Rome, and confined in the island of Planasia : 
Tiberius thus remained the sole heir to the greatness of his father- 
in-law ; but in order to point out the succession even for a moi^ 
remote period, he was obliged, by Augustus, to adopt as his son 
his nephew, Germanicus, the only surviving child of his brother 
Drusus, although he had at the same time a son of his own. Ac- 
cordingly, during the last ten years of the life of Augustus, Ti- 
berius was associated with him in the tribunician power, and in 
the general administration of the empire, and was clearly marked 
out as his successor ; while Drusus and Germanicus, the two sons 
of Tiberius by birth and by adoption, seemed to insure the con- 
tinuance of the sovereign power in his family to the third genera- 
tion. 

We have said that M. Vipsanius Agrippa died in the year 
Anecdotes of his cha- '^^1. Four ycars afterwards Augustus lost his 
racter and behaviour. Qi^ieT chlcf counscllor and falthful friend, C. Cilnius 
Maecenas, by whose advice he is said to have been greatly assist- 
ed in the arrangement of his government. But his power was 
now securely settled, and the various conspiracies which were 
formed against him at different times after the battle of Actium, 
were the mere efforts of individual revenge or ambition, and were 
all easily discovered and punished. In the case of L. Cinnaj^"^ 
who had intended to assassinate him when sacrificing at the 
altar, he not only forgave his intended murderer, but offered him 
his friendship, and afterwards raised him to the consulship, being 
resolved, it is said, to try the effect of clemency after having in- 
dulged so largely in cruelty, or being anxious rather to preserve 
that character of magnanimity which, since the overthrow of 
every enemy whom he dreaded, he might counterfeit with little 
danger. Various other stories of his moderation are recorded ; 
his manners were affable and courteous to all ; he forbade, and 
probably in sincerity, that any one should address him by the 
name of "dominus," or master ;^"^ and when the people wished 
to force upon him the ominous title of dictator, he threw himself 
on his knees, and casting off his robe, and baring his breast, in- 
treated them rather to kill him, than to oblige him to accept it. 
In these points the example of his uncle always served as a use- 
ful warning to him ; and he also learned from it to avoid every 
display of state in the appearance and manners of his family, in 
the size of his house, and in the regulation of his establishment. 
Yet it would be unjust to ascribe to a politic premeditation all the 
popular actions of his reign. Good is in itself so much more 
delightful than evil, that he was doubtless not iiiseusible to the 

»8 Seneca de ClementiA, I. 9, &o s"* Suetonius, 53, et seq. 



HIS LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH. 



515 



pleasure of kind and beneficent actions, and, perhaps, sincerely- 
rejoiced that they were no longer incompatible with his interest. 
When Valerius Messala was sent to him by the senate, to confer 
on him, in the name of the senate and people of Rome, the title 
of " father of his country,'"'^'' he was affected even to tears, and 
replied, " 1 have now gained all that I desired, conscript fathers ; 
and what have I left to pray for from the gods, but that 1 may 
preserve to the latest day of my life this same unanimous love of 
my countrymen ?" He did preserve it, and even with an in- 
creased affection, in proportion as the remembrance of his former 
cruelties became less lively, and the period of general tranquillity 
which had commenced under his auspices was continually length- 
ening. At last, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, when he 
was going to accompany Tiberius as far as Bene- 
ventum, on the way to Illyricum, he was seized His last sickness. 
with a dysentery, which at first attacked him but slightly, and 
did not prevent him from fulfilling the object of his journey, after 
having spent some days on the coast of Campania, in the hope 
of recruiting his strength. But on his return from Beneventum 
his complaint grew more serious ; he stopped at Nola, at the 
house which had belonged to his father, and in which his father 
had died ; and as he became visibly worse, his wife Livia sent 
hasty messengers after Tiberius, to recall him instantly to the 
death-bed of the emperor. Meantime every thing that passed 
within the walls was concealed by Livia with the utmost care ; 
insomuch, that although it was given out that Tiberius found his 
adopted father still alive,^^^ and had a long and affectionate inter- 
view with him, yet Tacitus informs us that it was never clearly 
ascertained whether these stories were not mere fabrications,^!^ 
and whether Augustus was not in reality already dead when Ti- 
berius arrived at Nola. The same authority which jjis death 
related the conversation of the dying emperor with u.c. 766,a.d. is. 
his successor, pretended also that he actually expired in the arms 
of his wife, and that his last words were, " Farewell, Livia, and 
ever be mindful of our long union." It was said that he died 
about three o'clock in the afternoon, on the nineteenth of August, 
in the year of Rome 766,'^'^ and when he had in fact a little more 
than completed his seventy-sixth year. 

Augustus was in his stature something below the middle size, 
but extremely well proportioned;-'^ his hair was a 
httle inclined to curl, and of a yellowish brown; His character. 

his eyes were bright and lively, but the general expression of his 

210 Suetonius, 58. of September, u. c. 690, but owing to the 

211 Suetonius, 96, et seq. disordered state of the calendar, it was in 

212 See Suetonius, and Velleius Pater- reality more nearly the 23d of July, 
cuius. 214 Suetonius, in Augusto, 79. 

312 He was nominally born on the 23d 



516 CHARACTER OF AUGUSTUS. 

countenance was remarkably calm and mild. His health was 
throughout his life delicate, yet the constant attention which he 
paid to it, and his strict temperance in eating and drinking, 
enabled him, as we have seen, to reach the full age of man. As 
a seducer and adulterer, ^^'^ and a man of low sensuality, his 
character was as profligate as that of his uncle ; it is mentioned, 
also, that he was extremely fond of gaming, a propensity which 
he indulged even when he was advanced in years. In his literary 
qualifications, without at all rivalling the attainments of Csesar, 
he was on a level with most Romans of distinction of his time ; 
and it is said, that both in speaking and writing, his style was 
eminent for its perfect plainness and propriety.^ '« His speeches 
on any public occasion were composed beforehand, and recited 
from memory ; nay, so careful was he not to commit himself by 
any inconsiderate expression, that even when discussing any im- 
portant subject with his own wife, he wrote down what he had 
to say, and read it before her. Like his uncle, he was strongly 
tinged with superstition ; he was very much afraid of thunder 
and lightning,^!'' and always carried about with him a seal skin, 
as a charm against its power ; notwithstanding which, in any 
severe storm, he was accustomed to hide himself in a chamber in 
the centre of his house, to be as much out of the way of it as 
possible ; add to which, he was a great observer of dreams, and 
of lucky and unlucky days. He was totally destitute of military 
talent; but in every species of artful policy, in clearly seeing, 
and steadily and dispassionately following his own interest, and 
in turning to his own advantage all the weaknesses of others, 
his ability, if so it may be called, has been rarely equalled. His 
deliberate cruelty, his repeated treachery, and sacrifice of every 
duty and every feeling to the purposes of his ambition, have been 
sufficiently shown in the course of this narrative. But it was 
his good fortune, for the last forty years of his life, to be placed in 
circumstances in which he had no longer any temptation to the 
same kind of wickedness ; and thus it has happened that he 
whose crimes fitted him to rank with Marius or Sylla, with Nero 
or with Domitian, has been loaded with praises as a benefactor 
to his species, and his name has passed into a proverb as a pro- 
moter of peace, and a general patron of literature and of civili- 
zation. 

2'5 Suetonius, in Augusto, 69. 71. 2'' Suetonius, in Augusto, 90. 

*" Suetonius, in Augusto, 84, et seq. 



CHAPTEH XII. 

M. ULPIUS TRAJANUS CRINITUS.— FROM A. D. 98 TO 117. 

Between the close of the reign of Augustus Caesar and the ac- 
cession of Trajanus, there elapsed a period of eighty-four years. 
During this period the Roman empire, notwithstanding the crimes 
of almost all its sovereigns, and the disturbances to which it had 
been occasionally exposed, had consolidated its widely scattered 
possessions, and its different provinces had learned to consider 
themselves as members of one great body. It was well prepared 
to feel the full blessing of an able and upright government, and 
such a blessing it was now going to experience for a term of equal 
length with the period of tyranny which had preceded it. The 
first eighty years, then, of the second century of the Christian 
aera may be regarded as the prime of manhood in the Roman em- 
pire, during which its excellences were most fully developed, 
while at the same time there were visible, even then, those evils 
which threw so dark a shade over its decline and fall. It is of 
this period that we wish to offer, not a picture, but such a sketch 
as our imperfect information will enable us to execute ; connect- 
ing it with those particulars which we formerly gave of the state 
of the empire under Augustus, in order to show more clearly the 
changes which it had undergone since the first establishment of 
the imperial government. 

The reign of Trajanus is in one respect peculiarly well fitted 
to be made the occasion of such a survey, as we are absolutely 
unable to offer a detailed account of its events. A few pages of 
an abridgment of the original history of Dion Cassius, and a few 
lines of Eutropius and Aurelius Victor, are all that we possess in 
the shape of a direct historical narrative of it. Of these scanty 
materials, by far the greatest part relates to the military expeditions 
of the emperor, and to those conquests of which he himself lived 
long enough to see the instability, and which his successor quietly 
abandoned. It were indeed a waste of our own time and that of 
our readers to dwell upon the events of the Dacian war, or the 
triumphs of Trajanus over the Parthians and Armenians. Un- 
profitable as is the detail of almost every war, there is none more 



518 ACCESSION OF TRAJ ANUS. 

Utterly worthless than that which relates to the contest between 
a civilized and a barbarian people, which repeats the story of 
fancied provocations, of easy victories, and of sweeping conquests. 
Yet if we exclude the military operations of Trajanus from our 
account of his life, his historians and biographers furnish us 
with scarcely any materials. We shall first, therefore, give only 
a mere outline of the events of his reign in chronological order, 
and then, adopting a different arrangement, we shall regard the 
nature of the facts related, rather than the time of their occur- 
rence. 

At the moment of Nerva's death, Trajanus was still with the 
Accession of army lu Germany.' He had been named consul 

Trajanus. i[-^q socoud time for that year, together with the em- 

peror ; and as Nerva died about the 27th of January,^ almost the 
whole term of his consulship remained unexpired when he suc- 
ceeded to the sovereignty of the empire. He did not return to 
.Rome till the beginning of the following year, having passed his 
consulship in Germany, where he was employed in confirming 
discipline among the soldiers, and in the civil administration of 
those important provinces. A third consulship was offered him 
as soon as his second was expired, as the emperors usually 
marked the first year of their reign by receiving that title and 
office ; but Trajanus positively refused it. On his way home from 
Germany, he travelled in the quietest and most moderate manner ;' 
his attendants were restrained from Committing those excesses 
upon the persons and property of the people who lived near the 
line of his journey, which it seems were commonly practised by 
the train of the emperors. The expenses of his table were de- 
frayed by the inhabitants of the provinces through which he 
travelled, according to the constant practice of the Roman ma- 
gistrates ; but this tax of purveyance, which the sovereigns of 
modern Europe exercised after the example of the Romans, was 
imposed by Trajanus with great moderation ; and he could not 
forbear publishing a statement of the sums demanded by himself, 
contrasted with those which Domitianus had exacted when he 
returned to Rome from the same part of the empire. His entrance 
into his capital was in a similar spirit. Instead of being borne 
on a litter, according to the practice of former emperors, it was re- 
marked that he walked behind his lictors, surrounded not by 
guards, but by the flower of the senate and the equestrian order ; 
and that he bore with patience the frequent interruptions to his 
progress occasioned by the eagerness of the multitude thronging 
to behold him. He ascended the capitol to offer his prayers in 

1 Pliny, Panegyric. 9. 56. 59. Se.x. 3 Pliny, Panegyric. 20. 
Aurel. Victor, in Trajano. ■• Pliny, Panegyric. 22, et seq. 

'' Compare Suetonius, Domitian. 17 ; 
and Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 771. 



FIRST MEASURES OP HIS GOVERNMENT. 519 

the temple of the CapitoHne Jupiter, on the same spot whereon 
Nerva, a short time before, had solemnly adopted him as his son 
and successor in the empire. Thence he retired to the palace, 
which he entered in the same unostentatious manner that had 
marked his behaviour through the day. It is added by Dion 
Cassius,^ that his wife Plotina had displayed a like temper when 
she first entered the imperial residence, for she stopped on the 
steps, and turning rouud to the multitude, said aloud, " I go into 
this house with the same mind that 1 should wish to bear in 
leaving it." 

The popularity which Trajanus had gained by his former 
character, and by this fair commencement of his First measures of his 
reign, was confirmed by some of his earliest mea- government. 
sures, when he took into his hands the administration of govern- 
ment. His justice and firmness, his liberality, and his regard for 
the public morals, are all made the theme of his panegyrist's ad- 
miration. Caspinus ^iianus,^ the prefect of the praetorian guards, 
who had headed a mutiny of his soldiers in the reign of Nerva, 
and obliged the emperor to give up to their vengeance the assas- 
sins of Uomitianus, had been sent for by Trajanus, previously to 
his entrance into Rome, and had been put to death. The delators, 
or informers, a race of men as numerous under the tyranny of 
the Roman emperors as ever the sycophants had been under that 
of the Athenian democracy, were banished to difierent islands, 
and their property confiscated ; and if we may interpret literally 
the language of Pliny's Panegyric, they were sent off to their re- 
spective places of exile with so little delay, that the ships which 
carried them were obliged to put to sea before the end of the win- 
ter season, and the people enjoyed the thought that some of them 
were likely to perish on their voyage. On the other hand, the 
liberality of Trajanus was shown both by that which he gave, 
and by that which he resigned. The donative to the soldiers, 
and the congiarium, or largess to the people, as well as the shows 
of the circus, which he exhibited on his accession, were so much 
according to the common practice of other emperors, that they 
do not deserve any particular notice. But he obtained a pecuhar 
and well-earned glory, by providing for the maintenance of nearly 
five thousand children of free parents,'' in the different cities of 
Italy ; and the example which he thus set was imitated by pri- 
vate individuals, as Pliny mentions^ that he had settled an annu- 
al income of 300,000 sestertii on the town of Comum, for the 
maintenance of free-born children. The object of these liberali- 
ties was to encourage population amongst the free inhabitants of 
Italy ; and there can be no better proof of the general corruption 

5 LXVIII. 771, edit. Leunclav. i Pliny, Panegyric. 26. 28. 

6 Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 771. » Epjgt yil. 18. 

34 



520 FIRST MEASURES OP HIS GOVERNMENT- 

of manners, than, that any snch encouragement should have been 
needed. With these acts of munificence was combined, at the 
same time, the modification of one of the most obnoxious, but 
most productive taxes,^ the duty of five per cent, which was 
levied on all legacies, and even on the successions of the nearest 
relations, when entered upon by persons who had become citizens 
of Rome otherwise than by the right of birth. By the decree of 
Trajanus, those nearest in consanguinity, whether in the direct 
or collateral line, were exempted altogether from this tax ; and no 
person Avhatever was liable to it, if (he property to which he had 
succeeded was below a certain value. And while he provided 
for the future, he endeavoured also to remedy the oppressions of 
past reigns, by enacting that no arrears should be demanded in 
those cases in which the parties should be exempted for the future 
under the law as now mitigated. But besides the direct taxes, 
the public treasury and the imperial fiscus had been long enrich- 
ed by the irregular exactions of the officers of the government, 
and by the frequent confiscations of the property of individuals 
condemned under the imperial law of treasons. The first of these 
sources of unjust gain Trajanus stopped, by allowing justice to 
take its free course, and leaving the officers of the revenue to the 
punishments of the laws, if they exceeded the limits of their law- 
ful authority ; the other was destroyed by the banishment of the 
delators, and by the discouragement shown to all prosecutions for 
treasons, and particularly to the informations of slaves against 
their masters. These deductions from the revenue were made 
up for partly by a severe economy, and partly by the sale of a 
great number of lands and villas,'" which the rapacity and tyran- 
ny of former emperors had annexed to the imperial demesnes. By 
these means Trajanus was enabled to promote the execution of 
many public works in different parts of the empire, and to add 
to the magnificence of Rome, and to the comforts or pleasures of 
its inhabitants, by completing the forum" which Domilianus had 
begun, and by erecting or finishing several other buildings, a cir- 
cus, some temples, and a colonnade or porticus. But while thus 
gratifying some of the prevailing tastes of the people, there were 
others which he strove to repress, as became him. The exhibition 
of the pantomimes was prohibited j^*^ an entertainment very dif- 
ferent from that which is now known by the same name, and an 
outrage upon all decency, more shameless than any thing to be 
found in the obscurest scenes of profligacy in the capitals of mod- 
ern Europe. According to Pliny, this prohibition was highly 
popular ; and so it was, doubtless, with the most respectable part 
of the community : but there was always a vast multitude at 

9 Panegyric. 37. " Sex. Aurel. Victor, de Ceesaribus, in 

'" Panegyric. 36. Trajano. Pliny, Panegyric. 51. 

"^ Panegyric. 46. 



THE DACIAN WAR. 52 £ 

Rome who forgave the cruelties of the most tyrannical emperors 
in consideration of their toleration of licentiousness, and to whom 
no government was so unwelcome as that which attempted to re- 
form their vices. 

But whatever were the virtues of Trajanus, he had not learnt 
to appreciate the misery and wickedness of war, nor 
to shrink with disgust from the reputation of a con- 
queror. Since the reign of Augustus, the conquests of the Romans 
in Dalmatia and Pannonia had made them acquainted with the 
name of the Dacians, a people who occupied both banks of the 
Danube, in that part of its course where it forms at present the 
southern boundary of Hungary. They were reputed to be of the 
same stock with the tribes who lived nearer the mouth of that river, 
and who, under the name of Getas, were known to the earliest of 
the Greek historians. But the more inland situation of the Da- 
cians kept them longer in obscurity, nor do we find them men- 
tioned by any writer earlier than those of the Augustan age. It 
is said indeed by Suetonius,'^ that C. Julius Caesar had projected 
an expedition against them, among those vast schemes of con- 
quest which were cut short by his assassination ; but however 
this be, in the reign of Augustus they first became engaged in 
actual hostilities with Rome ; and their incursions across the 
Danube into the Roman territory, under the conduct of their king, 
Cotiso, were of sufficient importance to attract the notice of the 
court poets of the day,** and to confer that renown which flattery 
is so ready to offer upon the efibrts by which they were repulsed. 
At a later period, when the troops which defended the frontiers 
were drawn off to other quarters in the civil war between Vitel- 
lius and Vespasianus, the Dacians'^ again crossed the Danube, 
and committed hostilities on the Roman territory. More recently 
still, Domitianus*^ had claimed a triumph for his victories over 
them ; but his pretended successes were an inadequate compen- 
sation for the defeats which they were intended to revenge ; those 
of Appius, Sabinus, and of Cornelius Fuscus, the last of whom, 
after having materially contributed to the elevation of the Flavian 
family to the throne, perished in Dacia with the greater part of 
his army in the reign of Domitianus. Thus, when Trajanus 
succeeded to the empire, he judged, in the usual spirit of ambi- 
tion and national pride, that the dignity of Rome required the 
chastisement of the Dacians. Grounds of hostility can never, in 
fact, be wanting between an ambitious, civilized nation, and the 
barbarian tribes who border on its frontiers, and whose rude habits 
of plunder continually lead them to offer some real provocation ; 

13 In Julio Caesare, 44 ; and in Augus- '5 Tacitus, Hist. III. 46. 

to, 8. ^6 Suetonius, in Domitiano, 6. Dion 

14 Horace, Carm. II. 20 ; III. 6. 8. Cassius, LXVU. 763, edit. Leunclav. 
Floras, IV. 12. Suetonius, Augusto, 21. 



522 BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE. 

while, on the other side, self-defence is pleaded as an excuse for 
conquest ; and injur}'- is seldom repelled without being also re- 
taliated. The Dacians were commanded by a chief whom the 
Romans called Decebalus, and who is represented as a man of 
ability and courage ; but no personal qualities, however brilliant, 
could enable a barbarian leader to resist the power of the Roman 
empire when steadily and skilfully directed against him. Ac- 
cordingly, he was soon driven to sue for peace, ^'' which he ob- 
tained on such conditions as were likely soon to lead to another 
war ; for his people were obliged to surrender up their arms, to 
give up all deserters or fugitives who had fled to them from the 
Romans, to pull down their fortresses, to cede a portion of terri- 
tory, and to become the dependent allies of Rome. These terms 
were observed as long as the impression of their defeats retained 
its original force ; but in a very short time the Romans began to 
complain that they were collecting arms, and rebuilding their fort- 
resses, and harbouring fugitives from the Roman territory; and 
Trajanus prepared to attack them again, glad, perhaps, that he 
was now furnished with a pretext, according to the usual policy 
of Rome, for completing the conquest of their countr}^. 

At the outset of his expedition, he indicated by his conduct 
Bridge over the that he meditated more than a temporary'' inroad 
o^"^- into the enemy's territory. Hitherto the Danube 

had been regarded as the limit of the empire ; but Trajanus pro- 
posed to create a Roman province to the north of that river, and 
a permanent bridge over it became a necessary work to facilitate 
the communication with this remote portion of his dominions. 
Accordingly'' he completed one on a scale of magnificence, if we 
may believe Dion Cassius, superior to that of all his other works. 
He tells us,*^ that there were twenty piers of stone, at intervals 
of 170 feet from each other, and that each of these was in height 
150 feet above the foundations, and sixty feet wide. The arches 
which connected them were probably made of wood, and could 
thus be taken down with the greater facility, which we are told 
was done by the emperor Hadrianus, who took away all the 
upper part of the bridge, and left merely the piers standing. We 
believe that the exact site of this famous work has not been as- 
certained, nor are we aware that any researches have been made 
to determine it, or to learn what is the extent of the actual re- 
mains ; but according to D'Anville, it was built at a spot called 
Ram, about four leagues above Orsova, and about a hundred 
miles below Belgrade. 

As soon as the bridge was finished, the conquest of Dacia 
was speedily effected. Decebalus," seeing all his etlbrts useless, 

" Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 773. »» Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 777. 

•8 LXVIII. 7T6. 



FINAL CONQUEST OP DACIA. 533 

and his palace in the hands of the enemy, killed Final con uest of 
himself; and his treasures, which he is said to ''^"*- 
have concealed under the bed of the river Sargetias, were be- 
trayed to the Romans by one of his officers, and by turning the 
course of the stream, were discovered and carried off. Dacia was 
reduced to the form of a province, and some Roman colonies were 
settled in it, the principal of which was called Ulpia Trajana, 
and was estabUshed at Zamisegethusa, the ancient capital of the 
country, on one of the streams which flow from the east into the 
Theyss. 

After the conclusion of this war, Trajanus returned to Rome, 
and gratified the people by rejoicings celebrated on ^^^^^ ^, ^rajanu's 
the most magnificent scale ; for, according to Dion *° ^°'^^- 
Cassius,^** the different shows that were exhibited lasted for four 
months, in the course of which no fewer than ten thousand gla- 
diators are said to have fought for the amusement of the multitude. 
It was in commemoration also of the conquest of 
Dacia, that the famous pillar in the forum of Tra- «^ f"'"^'" ^"'J p""^^- 
janus was erected ; although it was not completed till the seven- 
teenth year of his reign. The height of this pillar is 128 Roman 
feet,"! a,nd the whole shaft is covered with bas-reliefs, represent- 
ing the exploits of the emperor in both his Dacian expeditions. 
But the most remarkable circumstance connected with it, is the 
excavation of the ground, which was effected preparatory to its 
erection ; for the inscription upon its base declares, that the hill 
had been cut away from the height of the pillar, to form the level 
space on which the forum of Trajanus was built. These great 
changes in the appearance of the ground on which Rome is built, 
should always be borne in mind when we attempt to reconcile 
its present condition with the descriptions of ancient writers. 

Whilst Trajanus remained at Rome, he is said^^ to have com- 
menced the work of making roads or causeways ^^^^^^^ ^^.y^ p^^^^^ 
through the Pomptine marshes, to have issued a ?°tS?l™"the''kingrof 
new coinage, and to have founded several public Armenia, 
libraries. But his military ardour had been influenced by his 
late conquests, and he was ambitious of winning triumphs over 
the Parthians, and other Eastern nations, as he had already been 
victorious over the enemies of Rome in Europe. The pretext for 
this new war was an alleged affront offered to the dignity of the 
empire by Chosroes, the king of Parthia, who had conferred the 
crown of Armenia, by his own authority, on a prince named 
Exedares, instead of allowing him to receive the diadem from 
the sovereign of Rome. Ever since the victories of Lucullus and 
Cn. Pompeius, the Romans pretended to regard Armenia as one 

2" P. 777. 22 Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 777. 

21 Burton, Antiquities of Rome, 171, et 
seq. 



524 STORY OF PARTHAMASIRIS. 

of their dependent kingdoms ; and this claim had given rise to 
various contests between them and the Parthians, who viewed it, 
on the other hand, as a kind of appanage of the crown of l^arthia. 
The neighbourhood of the Parthians, and tlie unwarlike charac- 
ter of several of the Roman emperors, had made the Parthian in- 
fluence in Armenia really predominant ; but the right of the Ro- 
mans had never been relinquished, and was likely to be enforced 
by any ambitious prince who thirsted for the glory of eastern 
conquests. Accordingly, it was now insisted on by Trajanus, 
and preparations were made on a great scale to maintain it by 
force of arms. The Parthian king, unwilling to involve himself 
in a war, deposed Exedares, and nominated Parthamasiris, his 
own brother, as his successor ; at the same time sending an em- 
bassy with presents to Trajanus announcing this act, and request- 
ing him to bestow the diadem, according to the right of investi- 
ture which he claimed as emperor of Rome, on the prince whom 
he had just placed on the throne. For it seems, that the right of 
the Romans was little more than a form, and that they only in- 
stalled the sovereign whom the Parthians had previously nomi- 
nated ; as in the reign of Nero, when Vologeses, king of Parthia, 
had seated his brother Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, it was 
agreed that Tiridates should go to Rome to receive his investiture 
at the hands of the emperor. But now Trajanus, bent upon con- 
quest, rejected the presents brought him by the ambassadors, and 
replied to their communication with the characteristic haughtiness 
of a Roman general, saying, that the king of Parthia should man- 
ifest his friendly disposition rather by deeds than by words, and 
that when he should have arrived in Syria, the Romans would 
then do that which was fitting to be done. 

The narrative of Dion Cassius becomes here only a collection 
story of parthama- of disjointed fragments, preserved by his abbrevia- 
^"^- tors, so that it does not appear whether the nego- 

tiation was renewed on the arrival of Trajanus in Syria. It was 
at all events ineffectual ; and the Roman army advanced into Ar- 
menia, where they were met by the satraps and petty princes of the 
neighbouring districts, who came to make their submissions and 
to offer presents. Meantime, Parthamasiris had laid aside the 
style and title of king, and had written to request that M. Junius, 
the governor of Cappadocia, might be sent to him, as if he wished, 
through his intercession with the emperor, to obtain some favour- 
able terms. His request was refused ; but the son of Junius was 
sent to him, and he was probably given to understand, that he 
must present himself in person before Trajanus. The emperor 
was now at Elegia, a town of Armenia, having as yet not ex- 
perienced any opposition ; and hither Parthamasiris repaired,''^ 

23 Dion Cassius, LXVIIT. 779. 



STORY OF PARTHAMASIRIS. 



525 



in order, as he supposed, to go through the ceremony of investi- 
ture, which he the less doubted that he should obtain, as the pub- 
He humiliation thus imposed upon him seemed at least a sufficient 
atonement for any offence which the Romans might pretend to 
have received. Accordingly, when Trajanus was seated on his 
tribunal in the midst of his camp. Parthamasiris appeared before 
him, and having saluted him, took olf the diadem from his own 
head, and laid it at the emperor's feet. When he had done this, 
he stood silent for a few moments, expecting that Trajanus, as a 
matter of course, would desire him to resume it ; but when he 
said nothing, and the soldiers with loud shouts addressed their 
sovereign as " imperator," considering that the act which they 
had just witnessed was equivalent to the absolute surrender of 
Armenia to the Reman dominions, Parthamasiris started, and 
apprehending some attempt upon his person or liberty, turned 
in order to leave the camp. But when the soldiers opposed 
his passage, he requested a private interview with Trajanus, 
and went with the emperor into his tent. Their conference 
was unsatisfactory, and Parthamasiris left the tent in great 
indignation ; but he was again detained by the emperor's order, 
and was desired, with the usual indelicacy of the Romans, 
to state his cause publicly in the hearing of the whole army. 
Coarse and insolent as was this proposal, Parthamasiris did not 
decline it ; but standing before the emperor's tribunal, he indig- 
nantly asserted, that he was betrayed, and not conquered ; that 
he had come freely into the Roman camp, in the confidence that 
when he had gone through the ceremony of homage, his right 
to the crown of Armenia would be instantly allowed. Trajanus, 
who perceived himself now strong enough to avow his injustice 
without scruple, replied, that Armenia belonged to the Romans, 
and should obey none but a Roman sovereign ; that the Armenian 
followers of Parthamasiris must, therefore, remain with the Ro- 
man army, but that he himself and his Parthians were at liberty 
to depart whithersoever they thought proper. The disgraceful 
conclusion of this scene we learn from one of the newly discov- 
ered fragments of the works of M. Cornelius Fronto, the orator.^* 
Parthamasiris refused to submit to this treacherous outrage, and, 
with a courage that heeded not his unequal condition, attempted 
to force his way out of the camp. In this attempt he was natu- 
rally unsuccessful, and being taken prisoner, to crown the atrocity 
of the conduct of Trajanus, he was put to death. 

Armenia having been thus surprised rather than conquered, 
Trajanus left garrisons in its principal fortresses, and marching 

24 Principia Historiae, Fragment. IV. est, meliore, tamen Romanorum fama im- 

" Trajano, caedes Parthamasiris regis haud pune supplex abisset, quam jure supplieium 

satis excusata. Tametsi ultro ille vim, luisset." 
coeptans, tumultu orto, merito interfectus 



526 CHRONOLOGY OF THE REIGN OF TRAJANUS. 

southwards from Elegia, arrived at Edessa. Here he was hospi- 
tably received by Abgarus, prince of that district, who now 
thought it his best poUcy to propitiate the Romans to the utmost. 
Some others also of the petty sovereigns who Hved on the out- 
skirts of the Parthian empire, expressed their readiness to receive 
his commands ; and he thus made himself master of the town of 
Singara, and some other places in Upper Mesopotamia, without 
any opposition. At this point, the narrative of Dion Cassius 
breaks off abruptly, and the next remaining fragment of his 
work belongs to a period nearly ten years later. But it is certain, 
from the evidence of inscriptions, that Trajanus did not gain 
further conquests at this time ; and we may suppose, that after 
his occupation of Armenia he had no longer any pretence of hos- 
tility against the king of Parthia, and that, as that monarch was 
content to abandon Armenia to him, he led back his army, and re- 
turned to Rome. 

The events which we have just recorded seem to have taken 
Chronology of the placc about the tenth year of the reign of Trajanus ; 
reign of Trajanus. ^nd it was probably for his triumph over Partha- 
masiris that he assumed the title of " imperator" for the sixth 
time. In the inscription on the famous bridge over the Tagus 
at Alcantara,^' which bears date the ninth year of his reign, he is 
styled " imperator" for the fifth time ; and Dion Cassius tells us, 
that he received that title again from the acclamations of his sol- 
diers, when they beheld the unfortunate Parthamasiris surrender- 
ing to him his crown. But in the inscription on the pillar erected 
in the middle of his forum at Rome, and which is dated in the 
seventeenth year of his reign, he is described as imperator only 
for the sixth time -j^^ so that a decisive proof is thus obtained, that 
during seven years he gained no signal victories ; and as his 
wars were nothing but a succession of victories, we may fairly 
conclude, that from the tenth to the seventeenth year of his reign 
he remained at peace, and employed himself in the civil admin- 
istration of his empire. Between the completion of his pillar and 
his death, the rapidity of his conquests is marked by the accumu- 
lation of his titles of imperator ; for on the column, as we have 
seen, he is described only as imperator for the sixth time, but in- 
scriptions of a date two years later,'^^ in the nineteenth year of 
his reign, call him imperator for the eleventh time. We shall 
avail ourselves then of this peaceful period of nearly seven years, 
the events of which we are unable to relate chronologically, from 
the total want of all regular annals of this reign, to offer a gen- 



25 Gruter, Corpus. Inscription. I. 162. a bridge over the river Metaurus, on the 

26 Gruter, Corpus. Inscription. I. 247. old Flaminian road between Furio and 
Burton's Antiquities of Rome, 172. Fossombrone, which we copied on the spot 

27 Gruter, I. 248, and an inscription on in 1825. 



OP THE EXTERNAL RELATIONS OP ROME. 537 

eral view of the state of the emphe, and of the character of the 
emperor's government. 

Adopting the same arrangement which we formerly pursued in 
our hfe of Augustus, the foreign relations of Rome of the external leia- 
will first claim our notice. And here the picture *'°"^ "^ ^'"^^■ 
which we gave of the state of affairs under Augustus will require little 
alteration. Some acquisitions of territory had indeed been made 
previous to the recent conquest of Trajanus in Dacia. Our own 
island, after having been first conquered in the reign of Claudius, 
and subsequently held with a doubtful grasp during the last years 
of Nero, and the civil wars which followed his death, had been 
finally subdued and settled by Cn. Agricola, whose merits have 
been transmitted to posterity, perhaps with some exaggeration, 
by the affection and eloquence of his son-in-law, Tacitus. In the 
other extremity of the empire, Jerusalem had been destroyed, after 
a resistance such as the Romans had seldom experienced from an 
enemy so unequal. Some changes had taken place also, rather in 
the nominal than in the real condition of countries^^ already in 
fact subject to the authority of Rome, but retaining the form of 
an independent government ; and some barbarous tribes had in 
the lapse of years been more effectually subdued, or had gradually 
become more familiarized to the Roman dominion. But still, as 
in the reign of Augustus, the Parthians and Germans were the 
only nations whom the Romans found capable of maintaining a 
contest with them almost on equal terms. The Parthian power 
was indeed somewhat on the decline, and it was destined to re- 
ceive from Trajanus severer blows than it had ever yet sustained. 
But the Germans were as unbroken as ever ; nor had the Romans 
again ventured since the defeat of Yarus to extend their frontier 
beyond the Rhine. The title of Germanicus, fondly assumed by 
so many emperors, was the best proof that none had fully deserved 
it, and that the conqueror of Germany was as yet unborn. 

Nothing then remains to divert our attention from the internal 
state of the empire. In our life of Augustus we jt^ internal state. 1. 
attempted to mark the easy steps by which the old of the government. 
constitution had been converted into a monarchy, by showing 
that it contained within it all the elements of despotic power, 
while there was enough of servility and helplessness in the people 
at large to make them almost welcome as a relief their exclusion 
from all share in the government. Our business will now be to 
delineate the imperial constitution in its matured state, and to 

28 Cappadocia, from a dependent king- Tacitus, Hist. IIL 47 ; Eutropius, in Ne- 

dom, had been reduced to a province as rone. Rhodes, Lycia, and some other 

early as the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus, places, were in hke manner made provinces 

Annal. II. 42. A part of Pontus which by Vespasianus. Suetonius, in Vespasian, 

still was governed by a king of its own, 8 ; Eutropius, in Vespasian, 
shared the same fate in the reign of Nero. 



528 THE GOVERNMENT IS MORE MONARCHICAL 

notice some of those points in which the forms of freedom which 
still subsisted in the days of Augustus had been since overthrown. 
The government was now become an acknowledged monarchy. 
In the time of Augustus it was but a sort of perpetual dictatorship, 
bestowed by the senate and people on the most distinguished 
citizen of the commonwealth, as a remedy for the disorders occa- 
sioned by so many years of civil war. But the adoption first of 
the sons of Agrippa, and afterwards of Tib. Claudius Nero, into 
the Julian family, made it evident that the new state of things 
was designed to be perpetual ; and so natural is the notion of 
hereditary right, that even while the monarchy was thus recent, 
the succession was thought to belong to the family of the actual 
sovereign ; and in the failure of his immediate descendants, he 
was allowed to adopt whomsoever he thought proper, as the pre- 
sumptive heir to the imperial power. On the death of Augustus, 
the senate, by conferring all his extraordinary prerogatives on 
Tiberius, decreed in fact the final extinction of the commonwealth. 
The temporary reason before assigned for vesting the government 
in the hands of a single person, was now exchanged for one of 
general and lasting application ; the disorders of the civil wars 
had been long since repaired by the peaceful administration of 
Augustus ; but it was now discovered that the empire was too 
vast to be governed by the senate and people, and required the 
vigour and unity of a monarchy ; and thus, until the provin- 
ces should be dismembered, the Roman people seemed to resign 
for ever its old authority. The feeble attempt made by the senate 
to resume the government, after the murder of Caligula, did not 
last longer than two days ; and from that time, even when the 
succession to the imperial power was most disputed, yet none ever 
proposed the restoration of the commonwealth. 

We have said, that even Augustus, when he adopted Tiberius 
It waa far more mo- as his SOU, dcsigncd to make him his successor in 

narchical than in the ^^ . ■•-, .i ^i • i i 

time of Augustus. the empu'c. But the throne was never considered 
as actually hereditary, so that the natural or adopted son ascended 
it by the right of his birth, whenever the death of his father had 
left it vacant. By the theory of the constitution, if we may apply 
so noble a term to the imperial government of Rome, the emperor 
was still intrusted by the senate with the management of the 
republic, and each succeeding sovereign derived his power accord- 
ing to law solely from their authority. It is difficult to say 
whether the consent of the army was legally necessary to the 
validity of an election, although in reality it determined the whole 
transaction. The new emperor was saluted as such by the 
soldiers, and he promised them a donative in return ; and the op- 
position of the senate to their choice must have been necessarily 
fruitless. It is possible, too, that the army may have been re- 
garded in some measure as the representative of the people, and 



THAN IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS. 539 

their voices may have been esteemed the sole remnant of the 
popular part of the old constitution. The comitia no longer as- 
sembled for the election of magistrates after the accession of Ti- 
berius f^ and although statutes (leges) and decrees of the commons 
(plebiscita) are acknowledged among the sources of the Roman 
law, even in the time of T. Antonius and M. Aurelius, yet the 
votes of the tribes in enacting laws as well as in appointing 
magistrates had become no more than an empty form.^° In their 
place the constitutions of the emperor were alloM'ed to have the 
force of laws,^^ and these gradually became more frequent, as the 
remembrance of free institutions became in every successive gen- 
eration fainter and fainter. It may be noticed also, as a mark of the 
more avowed monarchical character which the government assum- 
ed within a century after the death of the first emperor, that the 
title of dominus, or master, as opposed to slave, which Augustus 
disclaimed with indignation,^^ is familiarly bestowed on Trajanus 
by his friend Pliny, even in his private correspondence with him. 
But the instrument by which the emperors had perpetrated 
the worst acts of their tyranny was provided by ofthe imperial law of 
the new imperial law of treasons. Under the com- "easons. 
monwealth, the crime of " majestas Isesa vel imminuta " was held 
to extend not only to those actions which our law regards as 
treasonable, such as conspiring to levy war against the state,, or 
joining the enemy in war, but to a great variety of other offences 
of less magnitude, such as rioting, or gross misconduct in the 
management of a war, or the usurpation of the state and authority 
of a magistrate by any private person. Nor were even words al- 
ways exempted from its operation, if the story told of Claudia be 
deserving of credit, who was tried, during the first Punic war, for 
a passionate expression uttered against the people, when her car- 
riage was stopped in the streets by the pressure of the crowd. 
Whilst the commonwealth lasted, however, the severity of the 
laws was not amongst the prevailing evils ; and although many in- 
dividuals who ought to have been punished were never brought to 
justice, no innocent man, probably, was ever a suflerer from the 
law of treason as it was then established. With the imperial 
government new maxims and a new spirit of criminal jurispru- 
dence were introduced : the emperor was invested with all the 
majesty of the commonwealth, and to attempt his life,^^ or to levy 

29 We have said, " for the election of so gpg Hugo, Lehrbuck der Geschichte 

magistrates," because the comitia even in des Romischen Rechts, 611, 612, edit, 

the reign of Trajanus assembled in the 1824. 

Campus Martius, to go through the form 3i Gaius, Institution, I. § 5. Nee un- 
of nominating those persons consuls, prse- quam dubitatum est, quin id (sc. Constitu- 
tors, &c., who had been previously chosen tio Principis) legis vicem obtineat. 
by the senate. See Heinneccius, I. Ap- 32 Suetonius, in Augusto, 53. 
pend. §65; and Creuzer, Romisch. Anti- 33 Digest. XLVIII. Tit. 4. Paulus, 
quitat. 121. Senten*. Recipt. Tit. 29. 



530 O^ THE IMPERIAL LAW OP TREASON. 

war against his authority, were naturally, as in every monarchy, 
regarded as acts of treason. But the jealousy of Augustus, and still 
more of Tiberius, extended the same appellation to every thing 
that could be construed into disrespect to the person or dignity of 
the emperor. Not only were libels punishable with death,^^ and 
expressions adjudged to be libellous, which the worst despotism 
of modern times would never have attempted to question ; but 
even words spoken in private society were liable to the same pen- 
alty ; and it was treasonable to consult astrologers as to the fate 
of the emperor, •''5 to melt down or sell a statue of an emperor 
who had been deified, ^^ to take the head off from it,^' to scourge 
a slave, or to undress, close to it, with some other things so mon- 
strous, that if they did not rest on good contemporary testimony 
we should reject them as utterly incredible. The offence was 
proceeded against in the same spirit of tyranny by which it was 
defined : for persons held to be infamous, ^^ and whose evidence 
was not admissible in other cases, were in these received as ac- 
cusers; freedmen might impeach their patrons, and slaves their 
own masters ; both of which acts the Romans regarded in general 
with the utmost horror ; and persons of the highest rank, at least 
in the reign of Severus, might be examined by torture.^^ If con- 
demned, criminals of all ranks were punished with death, and 
those of humble condition, by one of those atrocious distinctions 
characteristic of the vilest tyranny, were either thrown to wild 
beasts or burned alive. The property of the victim was forfeited ; 
and if the charge extended to the act of levying war against the 
emperor,^" the forfeiture took place even when the accused died 
before his trial, unless his heirs could prove his innocence. 

A law so odious bred a race of informers well fitted to pander 
to its cruelty. Under the worst emperors they swelled accordingly 
into a numerous and formidable body, composed of the vilest in- 
dividuals of every rank, who abused the confidence of private 
society to report some word or action which the imperial law of 
treason rendered criminal. Such a system rendered the very name 
of justice unpopular ; and real crimes sometimes escaped with 
impunity, or were undeservedly pardoned at the accession of a 
better emperor, from the universal hatred felt towards all prosecu- 
tions,^' and the indiscriminate compassion entertained for all who 

3* Tacitus, Annal. IV. 34 ; XIV. 48. crimen Majestatis conimisit." Digest. 

35 Tacitus, Annal. III. 22. XLVIII. Tit. 4. 

3S Digest. XLVIII. Tit. 4. The atro- 37 Suetonius, in Tiberio, 58. 

city of the law of treason may be estinia- 3^ Digest, ubi supra, 

ted by the nature of those acts which the 39 Paulas, ubi supra, 

lawyers thought proper to specify as ex- *° Digest, ubi supra, 

empted from its penalties. " Non contra- *' Tacitus, Hist. I. 77. Placuit igno- 

hit crimen Majestatis qui statuaa Caesaris scentibus verso nomine, quod avaritia fu- 

retustate corruptas reficit. Nee qui lapide erat videri Majestatem ; cujus turn odio 

jaftato incerto, fortuito statuam attigerit, etiam bonae leges peribant. 



THE ROMAN LAW OTHERWISE EXCELLENT. 53 J 

had incurred the penalties of the laws. Nor is it amongst the 
least evils of a tyrannical code, that even after it has been mitiga- 
ted by a virtuous sovereign, there is perpetually danger of its being 
again revived in all its horrors in some succeeding reign. The 
precedent of a bad example is far more effectual in countenancing 
wickedness, than that of a good one in restraining it ; and thus, 
although Trajanus banished the informers, and suspended the 
operation of the law of treason, yet the race of the one soon 
sprang up again, and the enactments of the other remained in 
existence to be again called into action by a Commodus or a Cara- 
calla. V. 

It were unjust, however, to estimate the general character of 
the Roman law from the provisions of the lex ma- The excellence of the 

^ . . c 1 1 • • Roman law in other 

jestatis ; or to receive our impression 01 the pohti- respects. 
cal condition of the Roman people from those tragical details with 
which the histories of these times are chiefly filled. The imperial 
system had been engrafted upon a free constitution, and upon the 
laws of a free people ; both of which it entirely overturned, 
wherever they interfered with its own immediate interests : but as 
the principles of a corrupt system will survive many partial re- 
forms of particular institutions, so although the principles of liber- 
ty and wisdom at Rome had been crippled in many most import- 
ant points in their practical application, still their existence was 
not extinguished, and their influence was even yet plainly per- 
ceptible. The great lawyers of the age of the Antonines passed 
hastily over the odious page which contained the law of treason, 
and delighted to fix their attention on those wise and liberal pro- 
visions which concerned the persons and properties of citizens in 
their dealings with one another, wherever the government did not 
interfere. From the excellence of the Roman law in these points 
arose the eminent fame, so justly earned by its professors amidst 
the general decline of all other studies. It was here only that the 
wisdom of better times was still practically useful, and might be 
profitably emulated ; so that talents and integrity naturally turned 
themselves to that field which alone was open to their exertions : 
and when the higher duties of a statesman were inaccessible or 
neglected, those of a lawyer were fulfilled in an enlightened spirit 
which later times have been far from imitating. 

Nor should it be forgotten that the imperial tyranny, which 
deluged Rome with blood, affected but little the The imperial tyranny 
condition of the provinces ; and that even at Rome I^fd "bT'thT'hlgh'er 
itself, its victims were principally chosen from the '"^'^''"■ 
highest classes, while the mass of the community suffered from it 
comparatively nothing. It was, indeed, a bitter change for the 
patricians and the equestrian order, to have their proud and luxu- 
rious security invaded by executioners, and to be exposed every 
hour, at the capriceof their tyrant, to banishment or death- But to 



532 THE EVILS OP THE OLD CONSTITUTION NOT REMOVED. 

the plebeians, to the inhabitants of the provinces, and to the slaves, 
the spirit of the monarchy was certainly not more insolent and 
oppressive than that of the old aristocracy ; nor did the worst ex- 
cesses of the Caesars ever produce such wide-spreading misery as 
the triumph of the aristocratical party under Sylla. Even Cicero 
had regarded the grant of the "jus Latii," conferred by Caesar on 
the inhabitants of Sicily,^ ^ as an intolerable affront to the dignity 
of Rome. But now the rights of Latin citizenship were enjoyed 
by all the inhabitants of Spain ;*^ while the Gauls had received 
the higher privilege of becomujg citizens of Rome,^'' and were 
thus admissible to the highest offices in the empire. These two 
great countries were fast acquiring those marks of intimate union 
with Italy, which all the revolutions of after ages were unable to 
efface. Gaul, in particular, began to take a principal part in the 
civil wars, and entered into them more with the zeal of an integral 
portion of the state, than like a province contending merely for 
the choice of masters. When Julius Vindex revolted against Nero, 
his main support was in the devotion of the people of Gaul to his 
cause ; and their efforts were rewarded by Galba with the gift of 
Roman citizenship, and the reduction of a fourth part of their 
taxation for ever. 

But although the monarchy did not increase the evils to 
But it did TOt romove which tlic grcatcst part of the subjects of the em- 

the evils of the old . i- i i ^ /■ i • t t t i 

constitution. pire wcrc liable, yet we must confess that it did little 

to remove them. That hateful pride, which made the Romans 
so careless of the sufferings of those whom they considered their 
inferiors, was an effectual bar to any attempts to ameliorate the 
condition of the slaves, or to check the abuses of power when ex- 
ercised only against the poor and ignoble. When in the reign of 
Nero,^^ Pedanius Secimdus was murdered by one of his slaves, 
his whole household, consisting of four hundred slaves of both 
sexes and of all ages, were ordered, according to ancient practice, 
to be put to death. The populace of Rome, whose natural hu- 
manity had not been quite extinguished by the callousness of 
rank and wealth, rose in tumult to resist the execution. Upon 
this, the case was debated in the senate, and C. Cassius, the 
most celebrated lawyer of his day, strongly urged the expediency 
of enforcing the sentence. His opinion was approved by a large 
majority ; and to prevent the possibility of a rescue, Nero lined 
the streets with troops, whilst these four hundred human beings, 
most of whom were undoubtedly innocent, and amongst whose 
number were old men, women, and children, were led to an indis- 
criminate butchery. So also in the reign of Tiberius, four thou- 

<2 Epist. ad Atticum, XIV. 12. Multa " Pliny, Hist. Nat. III. 3. 

illis (Siculis) CsEsar, neque me invito: " Tacitus, Hist. I. 8 ; IV. 74. 

ctsi Latinitas erat non ferenda ; verumia- *5 Tacitue, Annal. XIV. 42, et seq. 
men. 



APATHY OP THE PEOPLE ENCOURAGED BY GOVERNMENT. 533 

sand freedmen.^' mostly Je\v& and Egyptians, and guilty of no 
other crime than that of practising the religious rites of their re- 
spective countries, were expelled from Rome, and sent into Sar- 
dinia to repress the banditti of that island, a service which, from 
the unhealthiness of the climate, was almost equivalent to a sen- 
tence of death ; '' but if they perished," says Tacitus, " their loss 
was of no consequence." The same pride showed itself in more 
trifling matters, in the behaviour of the great to the humbler 
classes of society. The door of a wealthy and noble Roman was 
crowded before day-break by visitors who came to pay their court 
to him,^^ and who, after undergoing the most insolent treatment 
from his porter, were seldom admitted to an interview with him- 
self, but were answered by one of his servants ; or if he did con- 
descend to see them, they bent down to the ground before him, 
and kissed his hand with oriental servihty. Hence, a number of 
subordinate oppressions were practised in the provinces, and espe- 
cially in the more inconsiderable towns ; so that we read of a re- 
quest preferred by the people of Juliopolis in Bithynia,*^ in the 
reign of Trajanus, to have a centurion resident among them to 
protect them from injury. The same feeling also tended to en- 
courage the insolence of the army towards the people, wherever 
they were quartered. Since Marius first changed the character 
of the legions by filling them with citizens of the poorest classes, 
and still more since the civil wars of the two first Caesars, the sol- 
diers had learnt to regard themselves as a distinct body in the 
nation, to whose superior merit and importance all other citizens 
should pay deference. Then all who did not belong to the army 
were designated by the term " pagini," which soon became used 
contemptuously, and thus in itself afforded a proof of the undue 
supremacy of those who could venture to stigmatize all other 
members of the community. But their offensive behaviour 
was not confined to words ; and we learn from history, 
no less than from the lively picture of the satirist," that 
the soldiers were in the habit of using personal violence to the 
provincials and to the Roman citizens of humble condition ; nor 
did the injured party dare to seek for redress, lest he should pro- 
voke the resentment of the offender's comrades. 

The worst effect, however, of the imperial dominion as of that 
Helplessness of the of the commonwcalth, was the helplessness of mind 

people encouraged by , . , 1 1 i • i • 

government. which B. cowardly policy taught It to encourage 

amongst the people of the provinces. It was maintained by Aris- 
totle,^^ that a state could not consist of so great a number as a 
hundred thousand citizens ; and although we may smile at the 

*s Tacitus, Annal. II. 85. « St. Luke, III. 14. Juvenal, Sat. 

" Lucian, de Moribua Philosophorum, XVI. 

p. 20, edit. 1615. eo Ethic Nicomach. IX. 10. 
« Pliny, Epist. X. 81. 



534 APATHY OP THE PEOPLE ENCOURAGED BY GOVERNMENT. 

exaggeration of this doctrine, yet it was founded on the justest 
notions of the duties of a pohtical society, where all should have 
a common interest, and should be keenly alive to the welfare of 
each other, and of the whole body. The Greeks, therefore, dis- 
tinguished between a state and a dominion ; and it was by the 
latter name that they characterized that vast mass of countries 
yoked together at the time of which we are treating under the 
sovereignty of Rome. The inhabitants then of the greatest part 
of the empire were subjects, and not citizens ; and that activity 
and attention to public affairs which is the great virtue of a citi- 
zen, is most unwelcome to a sovereign when he sees it in his sub- 
jects. An enlightened despot, like Trajanus, is frequently desirous 
of promoting the good of his people, but he dreads to see them 
able and zealous to promote their own ; not considering that 
wealth and security lose half their value when they are passively 
received from another ; and that men will dwindle into children 
in understanding and energy, when they are obliged to depend in 
childlike helplessness on the protection of their rulers. It is 
remarkable, with what exceeding suspicion Trajanus regarded 
every thing like a principle of internal organization and self- 
dependence in the people of his empire, A destructive fire had 
broken out at Nicomedia in Bithynia,^^ and had been greatly ag- 
gravated by the apathy of the people, who looked on without 
attempting to extinguish it. To prevent the recurrence of such 
accidents, Pliny, who was then proconsul of the province, recom- 
mended the institution of a company of engineers, to consist of a 
hundred and fifty persons, who were to have, we may suppose, a 
monopoly of the business of firemen, and would know how to 
act with effect whenever their services were wanted. But Tra- 
janus objected to the proposal, on fhe express ground, that he did 
not like the principle of association, as it might lead to factions. 
On another occasion, the people of Amisus begged to be allowed, 
according to their own laws,^*^ to give their sgavot, or public enter- 
tainments to the poorer classes, furnished by the subscriptions of 
the rich. Trajanus consented, as Amisus was a free and con- 
federate city, and was governed by its own laws ; but he ex- 
pressed his hope, that the entertainments might not be abused for 
purposes of tumult or unlawful assemblies ; and he strictly for- 
bade them in all the cities of the province which were more im- 
mediately subject to the Roman jurisdiction. In the same spirit, 
Pliny, in a letter to the emperor, expresses his fears lest a practice 
prevalent in his province, of the richer inhabitants assembling on 
certain joyful occasions a great number of the common people, 
and giving thom a largess of one or two denarii a man, should 
grow into a means of political influence. Nor should we omit to 

s' Pliny, Epist. X. 42, 43. *« Pliny, Epist. X. 93, 94. 



OF THE STATE OF AGRICULTURE. 535 

mention, the constant reference made by the people of the pro- 
vinces to the government, when they wished to execute any pub- 
he works of ornament or utiHty. Sometimes pecuniary assistance 
is requested, at other times permission is asked to devote a part of 
the revenue of a corporation to such purposes, or the emperor is 
apphed to, to send surveyors and engineers to direct the opera- 
tions. It seems as if the people had in themselves no principle of 
activity, but were taught on every occasion to look for aid or for 
permission to the government. In the reign of Trajanus certainly, 
the government was sufficiently ready to promote any scheme of 
improvement that promised to be beneficial ; but when other em- 
perors succeeded, who had neither the ability nor the disposition 
to forward such plans, the evil of encouraging helplessness in the 
people became apparent, and when the provinces were neglected 
by their rulers, they had lost the energy to act for themselves. 

We have been led insensibly to encroach upon a topic which 
belongs more properly to a subsequent part of this sketch. But the 
transition, from considering the nature of the imperial government 
to an inquiry into the state of the people, is so faintly marked, 
that it is difficult when speaking of the one to forbear all mention 
of the other. We now, however, propose to proceed expressly to 
this second division of our subject ; and to illustrate the physical 
and moral condition of the inhabitants of the Roman empire, by 
some notices on each of these following points : — 1st, the amount 
of the national wealth, its distribution, security, and the degree 
and manner in which it was affected by the government ; 2nd, the 
state of literature and general knowledge ; and 3rd, that of mo- 
rality, in the highest sense of the term, including our duties to 
God as well as to man. 

1. It is probable that agriculture, at least in the western pro- 
vinces, had made considerable progress since the or the state of 
reign of Augustus. We do not mean that it was agriculture. 
better understood than formerly in those countries where it had 
been long since practised ; but that the gradual establishment of 
the Roman power had diffused a knowledge of it amongst people 
to whom it had been hitherto very imperfectly known, and from 
the union of so many parts of the world under one government, 
the natural productions of one country were introduced into an- 
other,*^ and a benefit was thus conferred on mankind which sur- 
vived the devastations of after ages. The wealth and fertility of 
Gaul are spoken of in high terms ;^^ its corn and flax were par- 
ticularly noted ;" and different methods of manuring the land 
were practised,^^ which argue a state of considerable civilization. 
Even Britain, which had been so much more recently conquered, 

53 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXVII. 1. ss pjiny, Hist. Nat. XVIII. 8, 9; 

54 Tacitus, Hist. IV. 73, 74. XIX. I. 

56 piiny^ Hist. Nat. XVII. 6—8. 

35 



536 OF' COMMERCF. 

bore marks of the benefits which it derived from its connexion 
with the Roman empire. There, too, ihe use of marl for manure 
was familiarly known, and the cherry had been aheady intro- 
duced," a fact deserving of notice, as it shows that not only the 
most necessary articles of food, but fruits and vegetables, for com- 
fort and luxury, found their way into the provinces very soon 
after their conquest. The whole coast of Spain is pronounced by 
Pliny^^ to be the finest country, except Italy, with which he was 
acquainted ; and the list of towns which he has given us in Lusi- 
tania, and the northern part of Spain, marks the advances made 
by those ]irovinces since the time of Strabo, We hear much, it is 
true, of the decay of agriculture in Italy itself, and the greater 
part of that country seems to have been no more than a pleasure- 
ground for the wealthy Romans, while their farms for profit were 
in the provinces ; but the north of Italy must probably be except- 
ed from this description, as its towns were more numerous and 
flourishing than those of the south and centre, and its inhabitants 
were said to retain a simpler and purer character.^' It was 
probably owing to the increased resources of the western provinces 
that Rome was enabled, on one memorable occasion in the reign 
of Trajanus,^" to send large supplies of corn to Egypt, when, 
owing to an extraordinary drought, the Nile had not afforded its 
usual salutary inundation. This peaceful triumph of Italy is 
celebrated by Pliny as one of the greatest glories of the age of 
Trajanus ; and he extols the happy effects of civihzation, which 
had now conriected the most remote countries together, and had 
obviated the evils of an accidental scarcity in one province, by 
enabUng it instantly to be relieved by the superfluous plenty of 
another. 

To what extent internal commerce was carried between the 
different parts of the empire, it is scarcely possible to 
Of commerce. form au accurato judgment. The more general ex- 
pressions of historians are of little value, because they speak 
comparatively^ rather than absolutely ; and no one can doubt that 
the activity of trade under the emperors must have appeared ex- 
ceedingly great when compared with any former period of history. 
As to the foreign commerce, which was mostly carried on with 
India, the principal articles thus imported were silks and other 
luxuries, for which there was a great demand among persons of 
the highest fortune, but they were not used by the mass of the 
people. 

It is sulficiently clear, that a wealthy Roman could command 
Condition of the "lany comforts and luxuries ; but how far comforts or 
people at largo, eveu necessarics were within the reach of the majority 

5T Pliny, Hist. Nat. XV. 25." 59 PHny, Epist. I. 14. 

59 Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXVII. 13. «« Pliny, Panegyric. 30, et seq. 



CONDITION OP THE PEOPLE AT LARGE. ^^f 

of the inhabitants of the empire is a much more difficult and a 
more important question. The place of our labourers and operative 
manufacturers being almost entirely supplied by slaves, we have 
no opportunity of comparing the price of labour with that of pro- 
vision, the surest criterion of public prosperity, if the welfare of 
the majority be justly regarded as the welfare of the nation. But 
it seems probable, that the free population of the Roman empire 
was small in proportion to the extent of its territory ; and thus, 
that there was little of that severe distress which visits more 
thickly-peopled countries, even where their moral and political 
institutions are far superior to those of Rome. In Italy itself, 
several laws were enacted to discourage celibacy, and peculiar 
privileges were conferred on the father of a numerous family. 
That these provisions were not dictated by a mere undistinguish- 
ing desire of multiplying the number of citizens, is proved not 
only by the general complaints which we meet with of the decay 
of the free population, but by the remark of Pliny that most^' 
persons thought even one child an inconvenience ; and by the 
number of instances in which a successor to the imperial dignity 
was obtained by adoption, because the emperor had no natural 
heir. We may suppose that the eastern provinces were in this 
respect similarly circumstanced, for their morals in general were 
sufficiently licentious, and the unnatural indifference of parents 
to the fate of their children appears from one®*^ of Pliny's letters, 
in which he describes the foundlings in his province ofBithynia, 
as forming a numerous body, and states that many of them when 
exposed were picked up by persons who made a profit of selling 
them for slaves. In the western provinces, where the physical 
and moral character of the people was more favourable to popu- 
lation, their situation was that of new countries, where the in- 
habitants have not yet had time to multiply in proportion to the 
means of subsistence. We must consider, too, when calculating 
the comforts of the Roman people, that the climate under which 
they lived enabled them to dispense with many things, the want 
of which in the north of Europe is a sensible privation. Well- 
built houses, a plentiful supply of fuel, and a large quantity of 
substantial food, were not to them objects of the first necessity. 
As amongst their descendants at this day, their principal enjoy- 
ments were not to be found at home ; and if public buildings and 
places of public amusement were more numerous and more mag- 
nificent than with us, it was only becaub,j the fewer wants of the 
people obliged them to a less unremitting industry, and while the 
stimulus of diversion was more easily procured in the amphithea- 
tre or the colonnade, the neglected state of their individual dwell- 
ings could be endured without any sensation of wretchedness. 

« Epist.IV. 15. 62 Epist. X.71,72. 



538 OP THE REVENUE. 

Of the security of property in the Roman empire we should 
Of the security of j^dgo Unfavourably, if we compared it with the unri- 
property. vallcd protectiou which it actually enjoys in most 

countries of modern Europe. Yet our ancestors, less than a cen- 
tury ago, would have had little reason to exult over the Romans ; 
when Johnson might apply with justice to London the picture 
drawn hy Juvenal of the outrages nightly committed in the streets 
of Rome, when highway robbery was constantly expected and 
often experienced by every traveller, and a still more audacious 
system of rapine was yet unscrupulously practised in the high- 
lands of Scotland. Even at that period, however, we should have 
been surprised to hear of such acts as those noticed in one of 
Pliny's letters ;" where he mentions the total disappearance of a 
distinguished individual of the equestrian order in the neighbour- 
hood of Ocriculum, that is in the very heart of Italy, about 
seventy miles from Rome. No traces of his fate were to be dis- 
covered, and the same thing had happened a short time before to 
a citizen of Comum, when travelling homewards with a large sum 
of money from Rome. To these dangers of travelling must be 
added, at least in the provinces, the oppressions and vexations 
which poor and humble men often suffered from their more pow- 
erful neighbours ; and for which, under most of the provincial 
governors, they could find no redress. Hence Columella^^ advises 
those who were purchasing estates, to make themselves first ac- 
quainted with the characters of their neighbours ; and he con- 
firms his precept by his own experience, as one of his neighbours 
was continually felling his trees, robbing his plantations, and car- 
rying ofi" his cattle. 

We have spoken at some length of the Roman revenue in our 
survey of the empire during the reign of Augustus. 
Of the revenue. rp^ ^j^^ account of it thcrc givcu wc havc little to 
add, except to observe, that its amount varied largely under dif- 
ferent emperors ; that Galba for example lightened considerably 
the public burdens,^5 while Vespasianus" again imposed the taxes 
which had been taken off, and carried the exactions of the trea- 
sury to the highest pitch. The most fruitful sources of revenue, 
as far as Roman citizens were concerned, were to be found in the 
Julian and Papian laws, and in the legacy duty of five per cent., 
which, as we have seen, Trajanus considerably moderated. By 
the former, unmarried men between twenty and sixty," and even 
married men between twenty-five and sixty if they had never 
had any children, were incapable of inheriting from any but their 
nearest relations, and the property bequeathed to them devolved 
upon the treasury. The provincials were subject to a land-tax 

6* Epist. VI. 25. ** Suetonius, in Vespasiano, 16. 

6* De Re RusticA, I. 3. " Hugo, Geschichte dea Romischen 

(5 Suetonius, in Galba, 15. Rechts,623, et seq. 



STATE OP LITERATURE. 539 

and poll-tax, and to those other impositions which we have 
formerly noticed when speaking of this subject. They were 
besides burdened with the maintenance of the Roman magistrates 
by whom they were governed ; and if the ordinary expenses of 
the proconsul or procurator were provided for by a fixed sum 
raised for the purpose, yet when they travelled through the pro- 
vince they demanded what they thought proper for the support 
of themselves^^ and their domestic establishment, from the inhab- 
itants of the district wherein they happened to stop. Sometimes, 
too, the provincial cities were expected to send a deputation to 
Rome^^ every year with a loyal address to the emperor, or to wel- 
come their proconsul on his first arrival amongst them. To this 
must be added the various exactions which they often suffered 
from the oppression of their governors ; although in the reign of 
Trajanus offenders of this kind were frequently brought to trial, 
and sometimes to punishment. 

2. We have already expressed our opinion, that the merits of 
Roman literature, even in its most flourishing period, 

1 1 J.^ ..J J r 1 • ii i state of literature. 

have been greatly overrated ; and we beheve that a 
review of its condition at the end of the first century of the 
Christian era, might tend to lessen our wonder at the ignorance 
which afterwards prevailed throughout Europe. Our first im- 
pression would probably be highly favourable : we meet with the 
names of a great many writers, whose reputation is even now 
eminent ; we know that learning was not only held in honour in 
the eastern provinces, where it had been long since cultivated, but 
that Gaul, and Spain, and Africa abounded with schools and 
orators, and that a taste for literary studies had been introduced 
even into Britain. The names of the most distinguished orators 
at Rome were familiarly known in the remotest parts of the 
empire, and any splendid passages in their speeches were copied 
out by the provincial students, and sent down to their friends at 
home to excite their admiration, and serve as models for their 
imitation. Even the Roman laws, once so cold and so disdainful 
of literature and the fine arts, had in some points adopted a more 
conciUating language ; and the profession of a Sophist^" was a 
legal exemption from the duties of a juryman in the conventus 
or circuits of the provincial judges. The age of Trajanus then 
had greatly the advantage over that of Augustus in the more 
general diffusion of knowledge, while in the comparison of 
individual writers the eminence which Virgil and Horace attained 
in poetry was at least equalled by the historical fame of Taci- 
tus. But although knowledge was more common than it had 
been a century before, still its range was necessarily confined ; 

«8 Pliny, Epist. IX. 33. '« Pliny, Epist. X. 66. 

69 Pliny, Epist. X. 52. 



540 STATE OF LITERATURE. 

nor before the invention of printing could it possibly be other- 
wise. Pliny expresses''^ his surprise at hearing that there was a 
bookseller's shop to be found at Lugdunum or Lyons ; yet this 
very city had been for a long time the scene of public recitations 
in Greek and Latin, in which the orators of Gaul contended for 
the prize of eloquence. Thus, instead of the various clubs, read- 
ing-rooms, circulating Ubraries, and book-societies, which make 
so many thousands in our day acquainted with every new publi- 
cation worthy of notice, it was the practice of authors at Rome 
to read aloud their compositions to a large audience of their 
friends and acquaintance ; and not only poetry and orations were 
thus recited, but also works of history.''^ To attend these read- 
ings was often naturally enough considered rather an irksome 
civility ; they who went at first reluctantly were apt to be but 
languid auditors ; and we all know that even to those most fond 
of literature, it is no agreeable task to sit hour after hour the 
unemployed and constrained listeners alike to the eloquence or 
dulness, to the sense or folly of another. The weariness then 
of the audience was to be relieved by the selection of brilliant 
and forcible passages ; their feelings were to be gratified rather 
than their understandings ; and amidst the excitement of a crowd- 
ed hall and an impassioned recitation, tlftre was no room for that 
silent exercise of judgment and reflection which alone leads to 
wisdom. From this habit then of hearing books ratl)er than 
reading them, it was natural that poetry and oratory should be 
the most popular kinds of literature ; and that history, as we 
have observed in our notice of the Roman historians, should be 
tempted to assume the charms of oratory, in order to procure for 
itself an audience. A detail of facts cannot be remembered by 
being once heard ; and many of the most useful inquiries or dis- 
cussions in history, however valuable to the thoughtful student, 
are not the best calculated to win the attention of a mixed audi- 
ence, when orally delivered. The scarcity of books therefore, 
inducing the practice of reading them aloud to many hearers, in- 
stead of reserving them for hours of solitude and undisturbed 
thought, may be considered as one of the chief causes of the false 
luxuriance of literature at Rome in the reigns of the first empe- 
rors, and of its early and complete decay. We have already 
noticed the unworthy ideas which the Romans entertained of its 
nature, and how completely they degraded it into a mere play- 
thing of men's prosperous hours, an elegant amusement, and an 
embellishment of life, not a matter of serious use to individuals 
and to the state. Works of physical science, and much more 
such as tend to illustrate the useful arts, were therefore almost 

" Pliny, Epist. IX. 11. " Pliny, Epist. VII. 17 ; IX 27. Com- 

pare also I. 13 ; VI. 15 ; VIII. 12. 



STATE OF LITERATURE. 54 £ 

unknown ; so also were books of travels, details of statistics, and 
every thing relating to political economy. Had books of this de- 
scription been numerous, it would indeed have been strange if 
the Roman empire had afterwards relapsed into ignorance. The 
nations by whom it was overrun would readily have appreciated 
the benefits of a knowledge which daily made life more comfort- 
able, and nations more enlightened and more prosperous ; and 
the advantages of cultivating the understanding would have 
been as obvious to men of every condition in Rome, as they 
are actually at the present time in England, Germany, and 
America, As a proof of this, we may observe, that the only 
two kinds of really valuable knowledge which the Romans 
had to communicate to their northern conquerors were both 
adopted by them with eagerness ; we mean their law and their 
religion. The Roman code found its way, or rather retained 
much of its authority in the kingdoms founded upon the ruins of 
the Roman empire, and its wisdom imperceptibly influenced the 
law of those countries which atfected most to regard it with jeal- 
ousy and aversion. And the Christian religion, in like manner, 
survived the confusion of the fourth and fifth centuries, and con- 
tinually exercised its beneficent power in insuring individual 
happiness, and lessening the amount of public misery. If, togeth- 
er with these, Rome could have offered to her conquerors an 
enlarged knowledge of nature and of the useful arts, and clear 
views of the principles of political economy, and the higher sci- 
ence of legislation in general, we need not doubt that they would 
have accepted these gifts also, and that thus the corruption to 
which her law and religion were exposed, would have been in a 
great measure obviated. For it is a most important truth, and 
one which requires at this day to be most earnestly enforced, that 
it is by the study of facts, whether relating to nature or to man, 
and not by any pretended cultivation of the mind by poetry, ora- 
tory, and moral or critical dissertations, that the understandings of 
mankind in general will be most improved, and their views of 
things rendered most accurate. And the reason of this is, that 
every man has a fondness for knowledge of some kind ; and by 
acquainting himself with those facts or truths which are most 
suited to his taste, he finds himself gaining something, the value 
of which he can appreciate, and in the pursuit of which, there- 
fore, all his natural faculties will be best developed. From the 
mass of varied knowledge thus possessed by the several members 
of the community, arises the great characteristic of a really en- 
lightened age, a sound and sensible judgment ; a quality which 
can only be formed by the habit of regarding things in different 
lights, as they appear to intelligent men of different pursuits and 
in ditferent classes of society, and by thus correcting the limited 
notions to which the greatest minds are liable, when left to in- 



542 STATE OF LITERATURE. 

dulge without a corrective in their own pecuhar train of opinions. 
Want of judgment, therefore, is the prevaihng defect in all periods 
of imperfect civihzatiou, and in those wherein the showy 
hranches of literature have been forced by patronage, while the 
more beneficial parts of knowledge have been neglected. Nor is 
it to the purpose to say, that the study of facts is of no benefit, 
unless we form from them some general conclusions. The dis- 
ease of the human mind is impatiently to anticipate conclusions, 
so little danger is there that it will be slow in deducing them 
when it is once in possession of premises from which they may 
justly be derived. But, on the other hand, wherever words and 
striking images are mainly studied, as was the case in ancient 
Rome, man's natural indolence is encouraged, and he proceeds at 
once to reason without taking the trouble of providing himself 
with the necessary materials. Eloquence, indeed, and great nat- 
ural ability may, in the most favourable instances, diwSguise to the 
vulgar the shallowness which lurks beneath them ; but with the 
mass of mankind this system is altogether fatal. Learning, in 
the only shape in which it presents itself to their eyes, is to them 
utterly useless ; they have no desire to pursue it, and if they had 
such, their pursuit would be fruitless. They remain therefore in 
their natural ignorance ; not partaking in the pretended cultiva- 
tion of their age, and feeling no deprivation when the ill-rooted 
literature which was the mere amusement of the great and 
wealthy, is swept away by the first considerable revolution in the 
state of society. 

The decay of learning, then, which we are called to account 
for, is of all things the most readily explained. Unsubstantial as 
it was, it would have worn out of itself, as it did at Constantino- 
ple, even if no external violence had overwhelmed it. Facts, in- 
deed, whether physical or moral, are a food which will not only 
preserve the mind in vigour, but increasing in number with every 
successive century, furnish it with the means of an almost infinite 
progress. But the changes on words and sentiments are soon ca- 
pable of being exhausted ; the earliest writers seize the best and 
happiest combinations, and nothing is left for their successors but 
imitation or necessary inferiority. Poetry had fallen sufficiently 
low in the hands of Silius Italicus, and history in those of Appian 
and Dion Cassius ; the Romans themselves in the reign of Tra- 
janus acknowledged their inferiority to their ancestors in oratory, 
and in a few centuries more the vessel was drained out to the 
dregs. The great excellence of Tacitus is a mere individual in- 
stance, and we might as well ask, why Rome had produced no 
historian of equal merit before him, as why she produced none 
such after him. One other great man had died only a few years 
before the accession of Trajanns, whose example, had it been 
imitated, might have produced a great revolution in the intellec- 



STATE OF LITERATURE. 543 

tual state of the Roman empire. We speak of the elder Pliny, 
the natural historian. The particulars of his life and death, re- 
corded by his nephew, no less than the contents of his own work, 
display a thirst after real knowledge, and an active spirit in 
searching for it by a personal study of the great book of nature, 
which rose far above the false views and the literary indolence of 
his contemporaries. But he was a splendid exception to the 
spirit of his age, and there arose none to tread in his steps. Pos- 
terity were contented to read his writings, rather than improve 
upon them by imitating his example ; and his authority contin- 
ued to be quoted with reverence on all points of natural history, 
even down to a period when errors, which in him were una- 
voidable, could no longer be repeated without disgrace. 

It may be asked, however, why the example of Pliny was not 
followed, and why the most valuable parts of human knowledge 
were so unhappily neglected. In addition to the cause which we 
have already mentioned, namely, the scarcity of books, the prac- 
tice of recitations, and the consequent discouragement of any 
compositions that were not lively and eloquent, there are several 
other circumstances which tended to produce the same effect. 
The natural indolence of mankind and their attachment to the 
old beaten track were powerful obstacles to the improvements 
that were most required ; and if so many centuries elapsed in later 
times before the birth of Bacon, we need not wonder that no man 
of equal powers with Pliny arose at Rome between the age of 
Trajanus and the fall of the western empire. We must consider 
also the general helplessness of mind produced by such a govern- 
ment as that of Rome ; which, while it deprived men of the no- 
blest field for their exertions, a participation direct or indirect in 
the management of the affairs of the nation, did not, like some 
modern despotisms, encourage activity of another kind, by its 
patronage of manufactures and commerce. If we ask, further, 
why commerce did not thrive of itself without the aid of the gov- 
ernment, and why the internal trade kept up between the different 
parts of an empire so admirably supplied with the means of mu- 
tual intercourse was not on a scale of the greatest magnitude, the 
answer is to be found partly in the habits of the nations of the 
south of Europe, which, with some exceptions, have never been 
addicted to much commercial enterprise, and much more to the 
want of capital amongst private individuals, and the absence of 
a demand for distant commodities amongst the people at large, 
owing to their general poverty. The enormous sums lavished by 
the emperors and possessed by some of the nobility, or by fortu- 
nate individuals of the inferior classes, have provoked the skepti- 
cism of many modern readers, as implying a mass of wealth in 
the Roman empire utterly incredible. They rather show how un- 
equally property was distributed ; an evil of very long standing 



544 OF THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY. 

at Rome, and aggravated probably by the merciless exactions of 
many of the emperors, who seemed literally unsatisfied so long as 
their subjects possessed any thing. The Indian trade, which fur- 
nished articles of luxury for the consumption of the great, was 
therefore in a flourishing condition ; but not so that internal com- 
merce in articles of ordinary comfort, which in most countries of 
modern Europe is carried on with such incessant activity. Where 
trade is at a low ebb, the means of communication between differ- 
ent countries are always defective ; and hence there exists undis- 
turbed a large amount of inactivity and ignorance, and a neces- 
sarily low state of physical science and the study of nature. So 
that from all these causes together, there would result that effect 
on the intellectual condition of the Roman empire, which we 
have described as so unfavourable. 

From this unsatisfactory picture we turn with delight to the 
Of the moral state Contemplation of a promise and of a partial begin- 
of the empire. uwg of moral improvement, such as Rome had 

never seen before. We need not dwell upon the need that there 
was for such a reform, except to observe, that there can be no bet- 
ter proof of a degraded state of morals, than the want of natural 
affection in parents towards their offspring; and that the practice 
of infanticide,'^^ or that of exposing children soon after their birth, 
together with the fact that Trajanus found it necessary to provide 
for five thousand children at the public expense, and that Pliny 
imitated his example on a smaller scale in his own town of Co- 
mum, sufficiently show how greatly parents neglected their most 
natural duty. It is remarkable, also, that the younger Pliny, a 
man by no means destitute of virtue, could not only write and 
circulate indecent verses, but deliberately justify himself for hav- 
of the stoic i"g done so.''* Yet, with all this, the writings of 

philosophy. Epictetus and M. Aurelius Antonius, if we may 

include the latter in a review of the reign of Trajanus, present a 
far purer and truer morality than the Romans had yet been ac- 
quainted with from any heathen pen. The providence of God, 
the gratitude which we owe Him for all his gifts, and the duty of 
submission to his will, are prominently brought forward ; while 
the duties of man to man, the claims which our neighbours have 
upon our constant exertions to do them service, and the excellence 
of abstaining from revenge or uncharitable feeUngs, are enforced 
with far greater earnestness than in the writings of the older phi- 
losophers. We cannot, indeed, refuse to admire 
eice encies. ^j^^ noblc cffort of the stoic philosophy to release 

73 Is not the prevalence of infanticide says the same thing of the Germans. Ger- 

among the Romans indicated by the ob- man. 19, — " Numeruin liberorum finire, 

Bervation which Tacitus makes concerning aut quemquam e.\ agnatis necare, flagitium 

ihe Jews? Hist. V. 5, — " Augendae mul- habetur. 

litudini consulitur. Nam necare quan- 74 Epist. IV. 14 ; V. 3. 
quam ex agnatis, nefas." And, again, he 



ITS EXCELLENCIES. 545 

mankind from the pressure of physical evil, and to direct their 
minds with undivided affection to the pursuit of moral good,. 
When the prospect beyond the grave was all darkness, the appa- 
rently confused scene of human life could not but perplex the besS 
and wisest ; sickness, loss of friends, poverty, slavery, or an un- 
timely death, might visit him who had laboured most steadily in 
the practice of virtue ; and even Aristotle himself'^^ is forced with 
his own hands to destroy the theory of happiness which he had 
so elaborately formed, by the confession that the purest virtue 
might be so assailed with external evils that it could only preserve 
its possessor from absolute misery. The stoics assumed a bolder 
language, and strove with admirable firmness to convince reluc- 
tant nature of its truth. Happiness, as they taught, was neither 
unattainable by man, nor dependent on external circumstances; 
the providence of God had not,'« according to the vulgar com- 
plaint, scattered good and evil indiscriminately upon the virtuous 
and the wicked ; the gifts and deprivations of fortune were neither 
good nor evil ; and all that was really good was virtue, all that 
was really bad was vice, which were respectively chosen by men 
at their own will, and so chosen that the distribution of happiness 
and misery to each was in exact proportion to his own deserv- 
ings. But as it was not possible to attain to this estimate of exter- 
nal things without the most severe discipline, the stoics taught 
their disciples to desire nothing at all,'"'' till they had so changed 
their nature as to desire nothing but what was really good. In 
the same way they inculcated an absence of all feelings, in order 
to avoid subjecting ourselves to any other power than that of rea- 
son. When our friends were in distress/^ we might appear out- 
wardly to sympathize with their sorrow, but we were by no means 
to grieve with them in heart ; a parent should not be roused to 
punish his son,'''^ for it was better that the son should turn out ill, 
than that the father should be diverted from the care of his own 
mind by his interest for another. Death was to be regarded as 
the common lot of all,^'' and the frailty of our nature should ac- 
custom us to view it without surprise and alarm. In itself it must 
be an extinction of being,^' or a translation to another state, still 
equally under the government of a wise and good Providence; it 
could not then be justly an object of fear, and our only care should 
be to wait for its coming without anxiety, and to improve the time 
allotted to us before its arrival, whether it were but a day or half 
a century. 

Such were the doctrines of the stoic philosophers of the age of 

-5 Ethic. Nicomach. I. 10, " AfiXioy jilv ''^ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 22. 

oiSinore yevoir' ov £iSaiix(ov,vv jifiv ixaKapi^s '^ EpictetUS, Enchiridion, 16. 

ys,a>' npiajxiKais rvxa'S -^epiTriar). ^° M. Antoninus, III. lY. 

7S Epictetus, Enchiridion, 38. *' M. Antoninus, VII, 

77 Epictetus, Enchiridion, 7. 



546 IMPERFECTIONS OP THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY. 

Trajanus ; and assuredly it must be a strange blind- 
ness or uncharitableness that can refuse to admire 
them. He can entertain but unworthy notions of the wisdom of 
God, who is afraid lest the wisdom of man should rival it. The 
stoic philosophy was unfitted for the weakness of human nature ; 
its contempt of physical evil was revolting to the common sense 
of mankind, and was absolutely unattainable by persons of deli- 
cate bodily constitutions ; and thus, generally speaking, by one 
half of the human race, and particularly by that sex which un- 
der a wiser discipline has been found capable of attaining to such 
high excellence. Above all, it could not represent God to man 
under those peculiar characters, in which every aflection and 
faculty of our nature finds its proper object and guide. There 
are many passages in the works of Epictetus and M. Antonius, 
in which his general providence and our duties towards Him are 
forcibly declared ; still He seems to be at the most no more than 
a part of their system, and that neither the most striking, nor the 
most fully developed. But in order to make us like Him, it was 
necessary that in all our views of life, in our motives, in our 
hopes, and in our affections, God should be all in all ; that He 
should be represented to us, not as He is in Himself, but as He 
stands related to us, — as our Father, and our Saviour, and the 
Author of all our goodness ; in those characters, in short, under 
which the otherwise incomprehensible Deity had so revealed 
himself as to be known and loved, not only by the strongest and 
wisest of his creatures, but also by the weak and the ignorant. 

One great defect in the ancient systems of philosophy was 
their want of authority. It was opinion opposed to opinion, and 
thus the disputes of the several sects seemed incapable of ever 
arriving at a decision. Plain men, therefore, were bewildered by 
the conflicting pretensions of their teachers, when they turned to 
seek some relief from the utter folly and worthlessness of the popu- 
lar religion. So that a large portion of mankind were likely to 
adopt the advice of Lucian,^'^ to regard with contempt all the high 
discussions of the philosophers relating to the end and principle 
of our being, and to think only of the present, bestowing serious 
thoughts upon nothing, and endeavouring to pass through life 
laughingly. Something, too, must be ascribed not only to the 
discordant opinions of the philosophers, but to their reputed dishon- 
esty, and the suspicion which attached to them of turning mo- 
rality into a trade. Their temptations were strong, and such as 
we have seen even the teachers of Christianity unable often to 
resist. In an age of ignorance, just made conscious of its own de- 
ficiencies, any moral and intellectual superiority is regarded with 
veneration ; and when the sophists professed to teach men the 

82 Necyomanteia, 166. 



THE SOPHISTS, 54-^ 

tme business of life, they found many who were eager to listen 
to them. Then followed an aggravation of the 
evils of popular preaching under another name ; '^^^ sophists 

the sophists aspired to be orators as well as moralists ; and their 
success would depend as much on their eloquence and impressive 
delivery, as on the soundness of their doctrines. In the eastern 
part of the empire their ascendency was great ; and if the story 
of Philostratus be true,*^ the philosophers in Egypt formed as 
considerable a body, and, during the stay of Vespasianus at Alex- 
andria, claimed 'the right of advising princes as boldly as the 
Romish clergy of a later period have done. With these means of 
influence, and the consequent temptation to abuse it, the sophists 
were without that organization and discipline, which in the Chris- 
tian church preserved the purit)?-, or checked the excesses of in- 
dividual teachers ; and not being responsible to any one for their 
conduct, they were less scrupulous in avoiding censure. The 
same want of organization prevented them from acting in con- 
cert in the several parts of the empire, and from directing their 
attention on a regular system to all classes of the community 
from the highest to the lowest. The sophists were no missiona- 
ries, and poor or remote districts, which could tempt neither their 
cupidity nor their ambition, derived little advantage from their 
knowledge. 

Under these circumstances, the Christian religion had grown 
with surprising rapidity, and must have produced effects on the 
character and happiness of individuals, far greater than the com- 
mon details of history will allow us to estimate. If our sole 
information were derived from Pliny's famous " Letter," we must 
yet be struck with the first instance in Roman history of a society 
for the encouragement of the highest virtues, those of piety, in- 
tegrity, and purity, and embracing persons of both sexes and of 
all conditions. Such a project was, indeed, a complete remedy 
for the prevailing faults of the times ; it promised not only to 
teach goodness, but actively to disseminate it ; and to do away 
those degrading distinctions between slaves and freemen, and 
even between men and women, which had so limited the views 
of the philosophers in their plans for the improvement of man- 
kind. Of all subjects for history none would be so profitable as 
the fortunes of the Christian society ; to trace the various causes 
which impeded or corrupted its operations, and to bring at the 
same time fully into view, that vast amount of good which its 
inherent excellence enabled it still to effect, amidst all external 
obstacles and internal corruptions. We think that its friends 
have not rightly understood the several elements which have led 
to its partial failure, while we are certain that its enemies can 

*3 In vita Apollonii Tyanei, V. 27, et seq. 



548 OP THE GOVERNMENT OP TRAJANUS. 

never appreciate its benefits. But we must not enter upon this 
most inviting field at present ; and from the long, but very im- 
perfect survey which we have attempted to give of the state of 
the empire, we must at last return to the history of Trajanus, and 
hasten to conclude this memoir, after we have briefly noticed the 
character of his individual government, and his expedition into 
the East. 

The highest spirit of a sovereign is to labour to bring his 
Of the government govemmcnt, ui cvcry point of view, as nearly as 
«f Trajanus. possiblc to a statc of absolutc perfection ; his next 

highest praise is to administer the system which he finds estab- 
lished, with the greatest purity and liberality. This glory was 
certainly deserved by Trajanus ; and although he never thought 
of amending some of the greatest evils of the times, yet, as far as 
his people had suffered from the direct tyranny and wastefulness 
of former governments, his reign was a complete relief; and we 
can easily account for the warm aflfection with which his memory 
was so long regarded in after-ages. He pleased the Romans by 
observing many of the forms of a free constitution ; nor ought we 
to suspect that in so doing he was actuated by policy only, for he 
was quite capable of feeling the superior dignity of the magis- 
trate of a free people to that of a tyrant ; and he most probably 
spoke from his heart, when on presenting the sword to the pra^- 
fect of the praetorian guards, he desired him to use that weapon 
in his service so long as he governed well, but to turn it against 
him if ever he should abuse his power.** There is the same 
spirit observable in his conduct during his third consulship : as 
soon as he had been elected, he walked up to the chair of the 
consul who presided at the comitia, and whilst he stood before it, 
the consul, without rising from his seat,*^ administered to him 
the usual consular oath, that he would discharge his office faith- 
fully. And Vv^hen his consulship had expired, he again took an 
oath,*^ that he had done nothing, during the time that he had 
held it, which was contrary to law. These professions of regard 
to the welfare of his people were well verified by his actions. 
His suppression of the informers ; his discomaging prosecutions 
under the '• leges majestatis ;" his relaxation of the tax on inherit- 
ances ; and the impartiality with which he suffered the law to 
take its course against his own procurators, when they were guil- 
ty of any abuse of power, were all real proofs of his sincerity ; 
and they were not belied by any subsequent measures at a later 
period of his reign. The causes which were brought before him- 
self immediately, he tried with fairness and attention ;" and it 
was on an occasion of this kind, when Eurythmus, one of his 

«4 Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 778. Sex. 86 Pliny, Panegyric. 65. 
Aur. Victor, in Trajano. " Pliny, Epist. VI. 31. 

85 Pliny, Panegyric. 64. 



PLINY THE YOUNGER. 540 

freedmen and procurators, was implicated in a charge of tamper- 
ing with a will, and the prosecutors seemed reluctant to press 
their accusation against a person so connected with the emperor, 
that he observed to them, " Eurythmus is not a Polycletus," (one 
of the most powerful of Nero's freedmen and favourites,) " nor am 
I a Nero." In his care of the provinces, and in his answers to 
the questions to him by the younger Pliny, when proconsul of 
Bithynia, he manifested a love of justice, an attention to the com- 
forts of the people, and a minute knowledge of the details of the 
administration, which are most highly creditable to him. It is 
mentioned, too, that he was very careful in noticing the good 
conduct of the officers employed in the provinces f^ and consid- 
ered the testimonials of regard given by a province to its governor, 
as affording him a just title to higher distinctions at Rome, The 
materials for the history of this reign are, indeed, so scanty, that 
we know scarcely any thing of the lives and characters of the 
men who were most distinguished under it, nor can we enliven 
our narrative with many of those biographical sketches, which, by 
bringing out individuals in a clear and strong light, illustrate most 
happily the^ general picture of the age. But C. Plinius Secundus, 
whom Trajanus made proconsul of Bithynia, affords one memo- 
rable exception ; and we gladly seize this opportunity to bestow 
some particular notice on one of the most distinguished persons 
who lived in these times. 

C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born at or near Comum, 
about the sixth year of the reign of Nero, or a. d. 
61. His mother was a sister of C. Plinius, the nat- '°^ e younger. 
ural historian ; and as he lost his father at an early period, he 
removed with her to the house of his uncle, with whom he re- 
sided for some 3?-ears, and was adopted by him, and, consequently, 
assumed his name in addition to his parental one, Csecilius, He 
appears to have been of a delicate constitution, and even in his 
youth to have possessed little personal activity and enterprise ; 
for at the time of the famous eruption of Vesuvius, when he was 
between seventeen and eighteen, he continued his studies at home, 
and allowed his uncle to set out to the mountain without him. 
In literature, however, he made considerable progress, according 
to the estimate of those times ; he composed a Greek tragedy 
when he was only fourteen,^^ and wrote Latin verses on several 
occasions throughout his life ; he attended the lectures of Quinc- 
tilianus,^" and some other eminent rhetoricians, and assiduously 
cultivated his style as an elegant writer and an orator. In this 
latter capacity he acquired great credit, and to this cause he was 
probably indebted for his political advancement. He went through 
the whole succession of public offices from that of quasstor to the 

88 Pliny, Panegyric. 70. »« Pliny, Panegyric. II, 14. 

8» Pliny, Panegyric. VII. 4, 



550 THE EASTERN EXPEDITION OP TRAJANUS. 

high dignities of consul and augur, and was so esteemed by 
Trajanus as to he selected by him for the government of Bithynia, 
because there were many abuses in that province, which re- 
quired a man of ability and integrity to remove them.^' The 
trust so honourably committed to him he seems to have discharged 
with great fidelity ; and the attention to every branch of his du- 
ties, which his letters to Trajanus display, is pecuharly praise- 
worthy in a man of sedentary habits, and accustomed to the 
enjoyments of his villas, and the stimulants of literary glory at 
Rome. His character as a husband, a master, and a friend, was 
afiectionate, kind, and generous ; he displayed also a noble libe- 
rality towards his native town, Comum, by forming a public li- 
brary tliere, and devoting a yearly sum of 300,000 sesterces for 
ever to the maintenance of children born of free parents who 
were citizens of Comum. A man like Plinius, of considerable 
talents and learning, possessed of great wealth, and of an amiable 
and generous disposition, was sure to meet with many friends, 
and with still more who would gratify his vanity by their praises 
and apparent admiration of his abilities. But as a Avriter he has 
done nothing to entitle him to a very high place in the judgment 
of posterity. His panegyric of Trajanus belongs to a class of 
compositions the whole object of which was to produce a striking 
effect, and it must not aspire to any greater reward. It is in- 
genious and eloquent, but by its very nature it gives no room for 
the exercise of the highest faculties of the mind, nor will its read- 
ers derive from it any more substantial benefit than the pleasure 
which a mere elegant composition can afford. His letters are 
valuable to us, as all original letters of other times must be, be- 
cause they necessarily throw much light on the period at which 
they were written. But many of them are ridiculously studied, 
and leave the impression so fatal to our interest in the perusal of 
such compositions, that they were written for the express purpose 
of publication. In short, the works of Plinius, compared with 
the reputation he enjoyed among his contemporaries, seem to us 
greatly to confirm the view which we have taken of the inferi- 
ority of the literature of this period, and of the unworthy notions 
which were entertained of its proper excellence. 

It was in the seventeenth year of the reign of Trajanus, after 
Thceastnmexpcdi- ^ pcaccful pcriod of scvcu Or eight years, that war 
tion of Trajanus. again brokc out in the East, and the Roman and 
the Parthian empires became involved in direct hostilities with 
each other. We are neither acquainted with the causes of the 
quarrel, i;or with the precise period of its commencement ; but we 
are merely told, that the chief operations of the first campaign 
consisted in the capture of Nisibis and Batna?,''^ towns of Meso- 

»' Pliny, Panegyric. X. 41. 92 Dion Cassius, LXVIII. 781. 



THE EASTERN EXPEDITION OF TRAJANtJS. 551; 

potamia, and that for these successes, the senate bestowed on the 
emperor the title of Parthicus. Nisibis is a name which often 
occurs in the history of the subsequent wars between Rome and 
Persia ; and Batnse was a Macedonian colony,^^ and the seat of a 
celebrated fair, held annually in the month of September, to which 
there was a general resort of merchants for the purchase of com- 
modities of India, China, and other parts of the East. On the 
approach of winter, Trajanus returned to Antioch, and during his 
stay in that city it was visited by a most fatal earthquake, which 
lasted for several days, and destroyed a vast multitude of persons 
of every condition ; Trajanus himself, it is said, escaping with 
difficulty from the ruin of the house in which he was residing.^^ 
The next campaign presents us with a series of rapid and short- 
lived conquests, such as the East has often witnessed. It ap- 
pears that the moment was happily chosen, for the Parthian 
monarchy was torn by intestine contests, and was unable to offer 
any resistance, so that the advance of tlie Roman troops was a 
triumphant progress, and they crossed the Tigris, overran Adia- 
bene, were gratified by visiting Babylon as conquerors, and finally 
took Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian empire. Trajanus, 
elated with the successes, and emulating the glory of Alexander 
while he traversed the countries which had been the scene of his 
exploits, descended the Tigris to its mouth, to behold the Persian 
Gulf; and it is said, that seeing there a vessel ready to sail for 
India, he exclaimed that if he were a younger man he would 
carry his arms against the Indians. But on his return from the 
sea coast of Babylon, he learned how sudden are the vicissitudes 
of Asiatic warfare. While he had been dreaming of the invasion 
of India, his conquests of the preceding year were vanishing from 
his grasp. As soon as the immediate terror of his army was with- 
drawn, the countries which he had overrun shook off the yoke, 
and Nisibis, amongst other places, either drove out or reduced the 
Roman garrison, and recovered its independence. Nor were the 
efforts of Trajanus as successful as they had been in the preced- 
ing summer. Nisibis, indeed, was retaken, and the emperor en- 
joyed the empty glory of giving away the crown of Parthia to a 
prince whom Dion Cassius calls Parthamaspates, and whose 
reign was likely to last no longer than whi7.it the Romans were 
at hand to protect him. But Maximus, a man of consular rank, 
on whom Trajanus had bestowed the command of a separate 
army, was defeated and slain in Mesopotamia ; and Trajanus 
himself closed the campaign with disgrace, after having lost a 
great number of men in a fruitless siege of Hatra,'^ a small town 
of Mesopotamia, standing in the midst of a desert, and protected 

93 Ammian. Marcel. XIV. 7, edit. Vales. 95 See Ammian. Marcel. XXV. 301. 
9* Dion Cassius, ubi supra. 

36 



552 SICKNESS AND DEATH OF TRAJANUS. 

by tlie utter barrenness of the country around it, and the scarcity 
of fresh water. At the end of the season, the Romans fell back 
Hi. Hickn^ss and i»to Syria, with the hope of renewing their invasion 
'^^^^^- of Mesopotamia in the following spring ; but Tra- 

janus was seized with a lingering illness, which obliged him to 
resign all thoughts of taking the command in person ; and he 
wished, therefore, to return himself to Rome, leaving the army 
to the care of ^Elius Hadrianus, a native of the Spanish town of 
Italica, in which he had himself been born, and who had married 
his niece. As he had no children, the state of his health excited 
great anxiety as to the person whom he would adopt as his suc- 
cessor, and his wife Plotina is said to have used all her influence 
in favour of Hadrianus ; but it was generally believed that she 
could never persuade her husband to adopt him, and that the in- 
strument which she produced, and sent to Hadrianus at Antioch 
immediately before the death of Trajanus, was in reality a forgery 
of her own. It was known, at least, that she was present with 
the emperor when he died, and that she took care that no particu- 
lars of his illness should transpire, but such as she chose herself 
to circulate. Trajanus died at Selinus in Cilicia,^^ in the month 
of August, A.D. 117, after a reign of nineteen years, and a little 
more than six months. 

In addition to what we have said of his public character, we 
may add, that he was an atiectionate husband and brother ; and 
that the cordiality which subsisted between his wife Plotina and 
his sister Mariana " was thought to reflect honour not only on 
themselves but on him. It is said by Sex. Victor, that he was ad- 
dicted to intemperance in drinking : and the circumstance of his 
being dropsical in his last illness agrees with this imputation. 
But as a sovereign, his popularity during his lifetime was 
equalled by the regard entertained for his memory by posterity ; 
and his claim to the title of Optimus, which the senate solemnly 
bestowed on him, was confirmed by the voice of succeeding 
times ; inasmuch as for two hundred years after his death the 
senate,^^ in pouring forth their prayers for the happiness of a 
new emperor, were accustomed to wish that he might surpass the 
prosperity of Augustus and the goodness of Trajanus. 

X Dion Cassius, LXVIII.786. " Eutropius,in Trajano, VIII. 

97 Pliny, Panegyric. 83, 84. 



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